Paul+(Yuh-Chi)+Peng+CCT300

=**__Welcome to my Contribution and Analysis & Reflection page for CCT 300__**=

**__Contributions on Contents__**
1) Major contribution on " Heavy Metal Music" (Approx. 700 words) - Nov 1 2006

2) Added a full section of material on copyright issues on the "YouTube" posting. - Nov 4 2006

3) Added a full paragraph of material on the "Console War" page. Nov 13 2006

__Community Building and Maintenance__
1) Answered a question in the "Wiki FAQ page" - Nov 4 2006

2) Added three hyperlinks on the "YouTube" posting. - Nov 4 2006

3) Created a "misc section" under the navigation bar in the CCT 300 main page. - Nov 4 2006

4) Created a "survey page" for those students in the CCT333 who wants to post their surveys and get inputs from students in the CCT300. - Nov 4 2006

5) In the CCT 300 "main page" I organized the notes section. I underlined dates and use lines (horozontal rule) to separate the postings. - Nov 9 2006

6) In the CCT 300 "main page" I organized the navigation bar to give each sub headings a bigger font and underlined each sub headings. I also spared a space between each sub headings so that all the heading won't be crammed together. - Nov 10 2006

7) I answered question 9 in the "Wiki FAQ" page. - Nov 10 2006

8) Added a video link in the "Fun Video Links" page. - Nov 12 2006

9) Organize the layout of the page by using lines to divide the contents and added a heading for the comment section and underlined the headings on the "Console War" page. - Nov 13 2006

10) I added a picture gallery section and nine pictures in the "Console War" page. - Nov 16 2006

11) I added a sports section and a video clip on Vince Carter Slam Dunk Contest in the "Fun Video Links" page. - Nov 19 2006

12) I added a new banner (made the banner using photoshop) for the "Wikispace Alias" page. - Nov 27, 2006

13) I added a video clip on Lebron James in the "Fun Video Links" page. - Nov 30 2006

14) I posted a question regarding the lecture note posting on the "Final Test FAQ" page. - Nov 30 2006

15) I answered question 15) on the "Wiki FAQ" page. - Nov 30 2006

16) I have categorized the online readings according to the lecture for the "Online Reading" page. This allows people to quickly identify which website reading belongs to which lecture. - Dec 2 2006

17) I have fixed a typo in the "CCT 300" main page. - Dec 2 2006

18) Added a photoshop manipulated Ronald McDonald image in the "Adbuster" page. - Dec 2 2006

19) Added a bullet point beside the user "Quang, Tom" in the "Wikispace Alias" page to make the page more organized. - Dec 5 2006

20) Added an opinion on the "Test Feedback" page. - Dec 8 2006

Part 1
I have used Wikispace in other courses that I took in Sheridan, so I am familiar with Wikispace. I think collaborative learning is a very good way to receive and contribute information. You can contribute the information that someone else doesn't know and vice versa, such that it generates a mutual learning communication tool that I think it's wonderful. One thing I like about Wikispace is that it gives user the power to edit those information that aren't correct. This prevents other people to receive false information. One thing that I feel irritated is when someone changed the layout of my page the way how he/she prefers. This feels like someone is using your personal belonging without your permission. The expectation for myself would be try to edit Wikispace as often as possible to participate actively in this mutual learning environment. I have learned most of the functions that Wiki offers from previous courses such as edit, create a new page, create table of contents and etc. However, I would like to expand my understanding on Wiki by working with other experienced users and ask them questions to gain more knowledge about Wiki. As an experienced Wiki user, I will try to answer those questions regarding on how to use functions within Wiki to help other users. I’ll also try my best to organize the contents in the public spaces such as the main course page, navigation bar, table of contents page and etc to contribute to this Wiki learning experience.

Part 2
Upon choosing which postings to contribute, first of all, I usually look for those topics that interest me the most. Secondly, I look for those pages that the layout of it needed to be further organized in terms of putting headings, sub-headings and titles. In addition, pages that are lack in content are the ones that I would choose as well. When I add to other people’s work, I’ll try to find as many information as possible to backup my content. If I cannot find adequate information (2~3 sources) on a certain topic, I’ll choose not to contribute to that specific topic. I think it’s important that the content you add doesn’t repeat what the original creator already has. I think the added content should add values to the original topic. When I edit others’ page, I try to avoid deleting the user’s original content and try to rephrase what he/she is trying to say. Sometimes I find it offensive to delete other people’s posting to replace it with your own idea. When I edit others’ posting, I’ll look at the history of the page. If the user is still in the process of contributing to a topic, then I’ll edit when he/she is finished. I think it’s impolite to add information while someone is still working on it. As for re-arranging others’ page, I will first look at other pages and observe the most popular layout and re-arrange it according to my observation. I think it’s selfish to re-arrange someone’s page according to the style that you prefer. I try to log on to Wikispace as much as I could to check who edited my postings. One of our classmates edited the table of contents page and I realized that one of my essay topics got removed from the table of contents in his version. I was a bit angry at first place. But maybe someone accidentally deleted my topic without any bad intentions or it could be a technical error caused by using different browsers. After analyzing all the possibilities of technical or human errors, I didn’t blame whoever deleted my topic. I am sure it’s just an accident.


 * Update (Nov, 30 2006)**

I have noticed some users edited and formatted my major contribution on (Heavy Metal Music). The new format is really nice with pictures of heavy metal bands on the left side of the page and text on the right side of the page. I really appreciated this cooperative editing and learning environment such that we can learn from each other by observing what they have done to our own and other people’s page. In this case, I have learned to format the page by rearranging pictures and texts in different orientations and positions to provide a different visual appearance.

Part 3
It has been a few months working collaboratively with our CCT 300 classmates in this Wikispace learning environment. However, there are some challenges that I have encountered while working in this Wikispace environment. The editing tool and the editing page offered by Wikispace don’t come standard with the formatting tools. Every time I want to organize a new page, the organization of spacing between texts and pictures are very hard to manipulate without the formatting tool. Spacing between texts and pictures has to be done the right way at first time. Once the edit has been saved, the editing tool won’t accommodate any spacing changes if the user decided to go back and edit the same page again. Instead, the user has to manually click on the desired spacing between texts and pictures to organize the layout of the page. When every time I want to contribute text material, I would normally type up the content in Microsoft Word and copy and paste the content onto the Wikispace editing page. It would be nice if Wikispace offers features such as spell check, grammar check and automatic formatting function. These functions are very handy to help users to edit or contribute text on the editing page. This saves the trouble of using external software such as MS Word to do the formatting job. As a personal experience, I think the save button function on the bottom of the page doesn’t work very well. Sometimes the Wikispace system doesn’t perform the save function even though the save button has been pressed. Instead, the old version of the page will still be displayed on the website. This happened to me several times in which the material that I contributed are lost because the save function doesn’t work. I hope Wikispace can make some technical adjustments to make sure that functions work properly, in order to provide a convenient and user friendly collaborative learning environment for users.

Despite those technical deficiencies mentioned above, I think Wikispace is a very effective learning tool such that people have the chance to share their knowledge and learn from each other. Since new edits are constantly updated, users have the advantage of learning new knowledge on a specific topic every time they log on to Wikispace. People can also benefit from Wikispace by learning how to organize online text material through observation, in which people can learn how to organize contents by referencing how other people organize their information to create a mutual learning experience. Users can benefit from participating in Wiki, such that other users will be constantly updating your content so that you can learn more than what you have researched. Other users will check the validity of your information to make sure that you are receiving the correct information. All these benefits offered by Wikispace makes it a great tool for online learning.

As for this course CCT300, I think it’s a very unique course such that we learned a lot more than those theories in the lecture and the textbook. In addition, we also learned some practical skills in the lab such as the Wikispace team work project. This course is more than theories such that we actually applied them in real world example (Graphic Novel Analysis). This makes learning even more interesting by giving us a chance to use what we have actually learned. I also enjoyed the lab time such that the professor provided many helpful tips and suggestions to help us to finish our assignments. However, I would really appreciate if the professor can post assignment outline earlier so that students have more time to work. Overall, I think the whole course is very well structured to allow students to learn from many aspects.

Suggestions for Future Wiki Makers
For the future CCIT students, I would suggest that it would be a lot more organized if one standard format can be agreed upon posting your own personal essays on Wikispace. I realized that a lot of essay postings are very different in format, in which some people decided to write in double space and some people chose to write in single space. Also, some people choose to put a table of content navigation bar within their essay page and some people don't. As for the future, I think it would be a lot more organized and uniformed to come up with a standard format for posting your essays on Wikispace. I would also suggest that it would be helpful to use color fonts for headings and subtitles so that it stands out from the rest of the text, to make it easier for users to read and navigate. As well as using underline and bold for letters on titles and subtitles for the same purpose of easiness on navigation.