heatherasling


 * __Analysis & Reflection__**

Oct 19. I am still attempting to familiarize myself with the wikispace. I have not used or participated in an online community yet. This is an interesting experience because even though I have used sites like Wikipedia I have not contributed to them. Getting the pages linked to my name was a bit of a task, only because I have not used features like this so Im attempting to learn all of them as I go and get this up and running really soon. Im also trying to brainstorm what topic I am going to discuss for the second assignment and am still playing with different ideas.

November 8. Well things are getting completely crazy with school and for whatever reason I am unable to get my picture up on the wikispace for the group project. Just checked the main page and I guess I will have to bring it to school to do it? Not sure why this is happening because every other picture Ive wanted to get up there has worked, I guess it doesn't like the picture? Now however I need to get a move on in regards to the wiki assignment!

Success! So I have figured out what Im doing finally, Just had to look through it. I made an addition to the information under the social networking page - Facebook as I have recently been reading commentary and information that has discussed this popular service and the potential risk associated with it. Although Facebook in its' self is not a media genre it was a discussion posting that was available for me to get more expeirence posting on the wiki.

//November 14/15. I am actually looking forward to the final assignment because I have recently learned how to use Flash 8 and want to try to incorporate some of these newly acquired skills into the presentation of the final culture jamming project. I have learned how to create, edit and launch Flash movies and with luck will be able to do this and launch our project onto the wiki that we have created!! Now to contribute to another medium forum discussion

November 20. I have begun my media page on Candid Photography after finally becoming very familiar with the wiki format. I need to continue to develop this page and make adjustments to it as I continue my research. Also I posted a mini version of what our final culture jamming assignment will look like on the Iflock page last thursday. We are all working toward this project and I am attempting to test out ways to get the flash movie to play directly on the wiki site, perhaps I will have to ask someone more knowledgable about this issue very soon! I have made several contributions today updating / editing / posting on the Iflock wiki space for our culture jamming project. I introduced the adbuster's campaign to our site, included a link, as well as updated the proposal to include our most recent ideas and corrected spelling / grammatical errors in this wiki.//

**1. When first encountering wiki at the beginning of the course.**

 * What do you think/feel about this collaborative learning environment ?

//To be quite honest, at the beginning of the term I had not encountered a wiki before and was more than a little nervous about posting, contributing and mostly comitting some irreversible error and deleting someone else's work. After many uses exploring and looking through the wiki I have since become more familiar with it. In terms of the wiki as a collaborative environment, I have found it very useful to contribute to the ideas of others, expand the topic ranges and acquire a broader understanding of some of the topics that have been discussed. I felt that initially there was too much information and too much going on in the wiki format to concentrate and clearly find and work on a certain topic. Each topic feed introduces a new idea or thread and it is difficult at times to keep up with the volume of contributions.//


 * What are your expectations for yourself ?

//My expectiation for myself for this wiki format is to get more accustomed to the format, contribute to the topic feeds and develop the wiki that has been created for the final course assignment. This wiki project has been another inclusion of the ccit program that has challenged my traditional ideas of interactive websites. Being a classically trained musician it has been a challenge to adapt to some of the programs and technologies in the ccit program, but that is why I chose to take the program. I expected for my own personal expeirence to acquire more working of the wiki format and be able to perform basic functions and contribute to the media genres page.//


 * What can you contribute as an experienced participant?

//As an expeirenced participant I am much more aware of how to use a wiki and will be able to use this knowledge for future classes should I be required and am able to show others how to perform basic functions on the wiki site. I can contribute my knowledge of topics to the work pages, media genres and the final course project wiki for my group. I can use the knowledge and expeirence I have gained working on simple pages such as this one to further experiment and develop my skills on pages that I will use for other segments of the course.//

2. Think about the following and answer to the best of your ability:
 * How do you choose which postings to contribute or change? What do you look for?

//In deciding which postings to contribute to, I look for topics that I have some prior knowledge of. I look for postings that are incomplete which I can make a valid contribution to. I don't want to offend anyone by changing or altering their postings so I prefer to add my work to that of others, I do not want to invalidate anyone else's information or opinions in the postings. I also pick topics that I am interested in learning about and expanding my knowledge of.//


 * What are your thoughts on adding, editing or re-arranging other people's work?

//In some respects I do not like the ability that everyone has to edit your work. I think that you should be able to lock some of the contributions that you make so that no one can alter them or delete them completely. When you spend your time and energy to create a posting there should be a sort of record of it, and even though there is a marker that you have made a contribution, I think you should not be able to completely delete someone's work. I think that the format would be much improved if you could just add on to the ideas of others. It is a little to liberal in the way that it allows any person to arbitrarily decide that they are "more" right than another in the contributions, ideas or opinions that they have posted. One should be able to use their own contributions and add to them without fear that they're diligent work will be deleted by another person. Adding to the working of others is a wonderful asset that allows users to increase their knowledge, expand ideas and inspire other users. There is never necessarily an absolute right answer to any of it, allowing users to post and contribute to postings serves to be beneficial for all users.//


 * Do you regularly check your own postings for alterations? Has anyone changed your work and how have you felt about it?

//I do not regularly check what I have posted for alterations but I have been tempted to look on occasion. To my knowledge no one has changed what I have posted and I try to respect the work of others and aside from spelling errors do not change their work.//


 * November 29**

//Well I just finished the Flash movie for the final project which I undertook to put together. It is a compilation of the graphic art and text that we have created / modified and written. I think that Flash is the best way to present the various images that we have because it is more like a commercial / advertisement, and what they would use to advertise online. My individual participation for this project was primarily the Flash portion, though I did have input from my group members I took this upon myself to do because I wanted to get it moving along and knew that mike and matt are very good with graphics. Im getting pretty nervous about the final presentation as the projects / essays / exams are piling up but I am slowly getting more accustomed to them. Overall I think that the project has turned out very well, as always I will be tweaking until the last hour because thats just the way that I am! I am much more versed with the wiki than I was two months ago and I am pretty proud of myself for that. Im still very apprehensive about offending people and altering their content so I haven't done too much of that. I've seen the reactions that some people have had, and as mentioned in my reflection I think that to a certain degree we should be able to lock our content.//

//**November 30th.** Well the end is in sight! I think the the flash has been successfully completed, I went over it for a few hours today, got some input and tweaked a couple of things, adding and deleting and modifying and then including the soundtrack into it. I still can't shake the feeling that I should still be working on it but I don't think that will go away until after the last hour has approached. As the last few days to add to the wiki come nearer there is undoubtably going to be a flurry of activity from everywhere, its difficult to tell sometimes what is appropriate and how things should be presented.//

Iflock Culture Home
Group member, contributions include drafting of the initial proposal, contributions to the wiki space, content adjustment, deletion, addition, modification and creation. I have contributed to almost every page in this wiki space and worked to keep it as up to date as possible

Candid Photography
Created this page, added content and references. Included pictures that I have taken, the pros and cons of candid photography, the type of equipment that can be used, the best and most suitable equipment and advice on how to take candid shots.

Social Networking
//I also made contributions to the social networking page, adding content to the specific examples of Facebook and Myspace.com. Though they in themselves are not media genres they are terrific examples of social networking services and the prevalence of them. These websites are extremely popular and as many of us use them are a great example of the way that social networking has been revolutionized online.//

Some of the challenges I found working with this collaborative environment was the flow of ideas was often times all over the place. Also unless you had a huge amount of time to keep up to date with the wiki you can get lost very easily with the sheer volume of information produced. It was a challenge when trying to decide which information was appropriate, how to feel when someone deleted someone else's content. Working with the wiki was a very different expeirence in terms of what I was accustomed to, participating primarily in Web 1.0 this was a very different expeirence in the new boundaries of Web 2.0 features. Adjusting to this format was particularly difficult at times because I was not used to be able to adjust webpages and my contributions to online content were limited to my expeirence with facebook, online truck forums and emails where you cannot edit the interface or features of the page. Some of the advantages of participating in the wiki were that you given a deeper perspective on what other people were thinking of topics and how they could expand your point of view//.// One of the benefits was increasing your awareness of media, forms and content by reading the opinions of others. The wiki has shown me the most interactive form of "new media" that i have expeirenced to date. The wiki also gave the expeirence of paticipating in a genre of new media ourselves, a chance to explore and create the media that we are evaluating through this course. //I think that what worked well in the course was the general overview of media forms and the perspective we acquired when considering many of them. What might have helped would be a deeper explanation of how to look at them, considering media as the overall subject and then breaking it down similiar to the way we did but possibly more visually like with a brainstorm chart, showing the extension of each topic and maybe similiar questions for each genre. I think that overall there was for the most part an unbiased presentation of the forms and how to consider them as both providing information but in a limited sense. The course really came full circle in how to interpret, consider and evaluate the media that we are exposed to. The broad genres and smaller more defined examples and theories worked well to demonstrate / explain the overall themes. In the future you could also consider rather than having to evaluate a comic book, being able to choose a media subgenre of your choice, possibly making it a bigger project but I think that there would be an even large amount of interest for students, especially those who are unfamiliar with comic books. Yes it did surge some interest for the comic genre, but I have found with a lot of ccit classes that allow you to choose your own topics, you become a lot more vested into the projecting, producing a piece of work that you really want to keep or will have interest in after the class is over.
 * //challenges or limitations you experienced while working collaboratively on wiki//
 * //advantages or benefits from participating in this wiki//
 * //things about the course you thought worked well and/or suggested improvements//

December 8. The class is now over and although this wiki project is over for the sake of marks, I would not be adverse to or surprised if I made contributions to wikis in the future having learned how and now being much more comfortable doing so.//