westmoreland.zane.reflection



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=MAJOR Contributions=

September 26
~ Added the genre page, gave a definition and started a listing.

October 5th
~ Added Sandisk Sansa Rhapsody page

December 4th
~ Added to Final Review sections for Professor Jones Lectures where people could use for studying through wikispaces and added links to other useful area's of wikispaces for review(review page). ~ Ported the Powerpoint/Word file to wikispaces and formatted it, gave a notes section and made a table of contents for all lectures. (2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10). Have maintained and added to these pages as it progressed. ~ Added a page for technological determinism.

December 6th
~ Added main content for streaming media. ~ Added banner for streaming technology page. ~ Added reflection and banner.

December 7th
~ Added streaming media to the streaming media section.

=Reflections=

Dec 6. 2006

I find wikispaces to work very well, I have not had any problems with it's use. It handles two people working on the same page at once very well, and informs you about the status of the page when it is already being edited. I believe this space would benefit greatly from the use of keyboard shortcuts similar to what Gmail uses for easier use for those who use it very often, it can be tedious to keep moving the mouse to attatch links change the formatting. A built-in spell checker would also benefit the user especially when being used for academic courses, for my main contribution I found that I had no choice but to write it first in Work then copy it across so that I could minimize the mistakes. A nice feature is that if someone does read your part and notices the error they can correct it, however it would be much more efficient to skip that step entirely. The last thing I would do is add drag and drop capability for images/media.

Having people be able to edit work collectively is incredible to watch, it changes the mentallity from individualistic to community oriented. We should help each other along, and by each contributing our own piece it helps everyone. I have seen it first hand, when I added all Professor Jones' lecture notes to the wiki in wiki form for the final exam review. Every few hours I would check back someone would have added something. When people add to what you've done it really motivates you to do more because it mentally becomes a team effort.

Improvements to the course I would recommend are first to have a stronger sense of emphasis on wiki work. For example, I started the wiki strong and planned to continue byadding something everyweek, however with 6 courses, I really fell behind with my wiki contributions. If there were to be stated a minumum of 1-3 edits plus a contribution per week, then I would have been more compelled to use the wiki more, and get into the habit of using it. If everyone gets into the habit of contributing and editing early and weekly it would be a much stronger wikispace for everyone. Other than that I believe that the course is extremely well organized through using the wiki, and much prefer it to using WebCT Vista. All Wikispaces needs a private area for grading tools that are accessible only to the user and the moderators.