Raja,+Noreen

=**Analysis and Reflection**=

Noreen Raja :)

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Contributions
September 21st 2006 - Ceated page Graphic Novels October 22nd 2006 - Main contribution in creating the Mass Production and Mass Distibution page October 29th 2006 - Added a paragraph about Marshall McLuhan's life to Marshall McLuhan page. November 2nd 2006 - Began contributing to Group page of Twinkee (won't allow me to link) November 3rd 2006 - Added "Advertising Goals" to Advertising page. November 3rd 2006 - Added "Clowning and Krumping" to History of Hip Hop page. November 10th 2006 - Added Brief Biography and References to the Miller,Frank page. November 26th 2006 - Added Subheading and section fo Anime Symbols on the Anime page. November 26th 2006 - Added beginning paragraph to the Kitsch page. December 8th 2006 - Added to the paragraph about the 'darker side' of Fairy Tales (for some reason it won't let me link it)

Question 1
This is definately not my first experience with Wikispaces. I have previously worked with Wikispaces in my previous year as well as taking two courses this year dealing with Wikispaces. The thing I've always enjoyed about Wikispaces is that it follows the WYSIWYG rule (What You See Is What You Get). I enjoy the fact that there is no intense coding involved which makes the creation of Wiki pages much more enjoyable. One thing I hope Wiki will incorporate in the future would be to center photos or images on the screen rather than tabbing or spacing. Unless I'm not a Wiki professional and there is a way to do so. The one experience that I found negative about this particular experience was the fact that I created the Graphic Novels page and did my research and found that it was completely taken over. I enjoy the fact people can contribute but the fact that the page was completely overtaken caused me to change my topic. Sometimes it's difficult to find a topic and I worry once I put up the page, someone else will take it over. The Graphic Novels page however though I was a bit sad was taken over was a contribution of many classmates as oppose to one person. So I understand it's not intentional and that this is what wwe can expect from a collaborative community.

My expectations are to try and keep up with regular participation in collaborating with my peers' topics. I would like to provide more information to different topics and hopefully be able to elaborate on them with reliable sources. I also expect to collaborate with my Culture Jamming team, "Team Twinkee", and produce a great project with my fellow peers Mylene and Rick. Go Team Twinkee!

Again this is not my first encounter in working with Wikispaces. I have previously working with spaces last year in CCT 205. I didn't do too well with last years Wiki because I was quite confused with how Wiki worked. Though I knew that it was a collaborative learning and information site, I was worried with completely all my information in full, including spelling grammar and references before posting on my page. Thus after all the research I have done, I posted not long before the dead line and didn't receive any edits as I have covered the topic too thoroughly. I have learned from my previous experience and now understand that it is ok to put up little pieces of information at the time. I also understand that this is not a formal essay in where I misguided myself the previous year. I am now trying to consistently review my own page as well as my peers in my spare time, contributing in editing, providing pictures, linking, and adding more information whenever I can.

=Question 2= I enjoy looking through the topics I find the most fascinating and that I have the most interest in. When doing so, I find that contributing becomes less work and more fun. I also enjoy looking at topics that I have previous knowledge so I can have more information to provide and have previous sources in retrieving the information to contribute. I also enjoy looking at my friend's pages because I would like to see what they're interests are as well as help out in contributing and providing constructive feedback and hope they will do the same.

I enjoy adding and rearranging other works. I feel that when another individual adds to or rearranges my work, I can allow more options, ideas and creativity. In doing so, when I see alterations to my page may spark a new idea or even a new subtopic I would like to include. Also perhaps an individual cannot find the right source or pictures to add, if another colleague is able to do so, it because a great collaboration and everyone can help everyone else. For example, I forgot how to add a table of contents, when I left my page and reviewed it a few days later; a fellow peer has added it for me. It's a great concept that we can all help each other out by always trying to expand and make pages better. If worse comes to worse and someone does not like the alteration, it can be tweaked again or even be reverted to its previous form.

I always try and regularly check my Wiki page. I get excited to see others who take an interest in my topic and that add a new outlook or perhaps perception or fact that I may have missed. I hope to provide the same effect to my peers when editing and help to make the page better while they do the same for me.

=Question 3= Some challenges and limitations I find on working with Wiki would have to be linked to the Final Test period in where a group of us made a private page of lecture notes and chapter notes. However we failed to remember that though the page is private and that only the invited members are able to edit the page... it is still visable to others on wikispaces. Thus we all worked with the division of labour amongst ourselves but others who have not contributed since it was private were able to reap the benefits. In order to keep the Wiki space completely private, there is a fee of $5 monthly and to me it feels as if this defeats the purpose of having free use of the Wiki. Another challenge that I find would be if a number of group members for the group projects were trying to edit the same page at the same time it would give a message saying "someone has already editted the page while you were editting" and basically if you proceed to confirm the other group members edit would be over ridden by.

Advantages of participating in this wiki is pretty obvious in terms of a new way for a large class to collaborate with one another and benefitting from one another's research, views and opinions about topics and genres that are posted. Also if one person using the wiki did not know how to execute a specific action like adding visuals of images and video... another person using wiki would see this as a oppertunity to edit and help out.

The things that I felt worked well in this class were the text books when dealing with understanding genre in a whole and to understand how to fascilitate a genre through the use of comic icons, styles and even art work (lines and symbols). The text were fun to read and allowed a visual representation of Scott McCloud's theories and understandings. I felt the online readings were a bit heavy in addition to the 2 required textbooks we already had. However as long as there is an interest in genre, comics, art, expression or communication, this course works well. From my personal perspective of taking CCT 205, CCT 300, CCT 333... the wiki management has become a little overwhelming and I thought maintaining two wiki's was a little difficult since its easy to mix up which Table of Contents you are navigating through and I would have hoped that one of this courses worked with another form of Web 2.0.