Bakshi,+Rajati

__**Contributions:**__ December 8 >
 * Created the page titled 'RFID '
 * Added the portion on History on the page titled, Cognitive Psychology
 * Added video on the above mentioned page as well
 * Edited the page Lectures.doc
 * Added link to 'Affordances', 'Social Network', 'Aesthetics' page, 'Web Site Design' page.
 * Added link to 'Key Principles of User Centered Design' page.

December 1
 * Created page about the 'Electronic Tanpura'
 * Made spelling and grammar corrections for the page titled 'Digital Divide'.

November 17
 * Added more information about 'The Design of Everyday Things', by Norman

November 18
 * Created the page Lectures.doc
 * Copy pasted all the lectures on to word and then pasted them on wiki, saved all flow charts and trangles as pictures and uploaded them
 * Contributed to the Wiki FAQs page

__**Reflection:**__

In using Wikispaces, I felt kind of unsure in the beginning. However, I realized how easy it was to use and started using it on a regular basis. It's an easy to use interactive tool and I recommended that it should be used for another course as well! Some of the features that I like are that I can add links, change colors of pages, and one does not need a lot of html skills to be able to manage pages. It compiles student work much better than blackboard or webct and is accessible to view by the entire class. This keeps you motivated, when you see how well other people are doing and makes you try harder. I have had a very positive experience using this software and will continue to do so in the future.
 * Beginning:**

An observation that I made today was that one can upload pictures, tables and media, but I do not know how to upload documents onto wiki. Maybe students cant do it! :S Lectures have been put onto wiki using powerpoint, but when i tried to upload word documents it didnt work. Maybe im missing something? I guess I'll bring it up in class
 * Middle**

This is the first course for which I have used wiki in my life. Being an active member of the 'wiki community' I have learned a lot. I think I have learned more from wiki about topics than I did from many courses i took in the past. One of the major advantages of having a wiki are that I was able to learn via experience. Instead of being 'fed' information in a classroom and through a textbook, I read about topics that interested me, like Digital Music Production, Cognitive psychology, researched more on and then added my own input. It seems like a more fun way of learning. I think the best description I can give is that wiki is a 'pull' technology instead of a 'push' technology. This means that instead of making all sorts of knowledge and documented information accessible to the student which is to be accepted blindly, it provides the student the opportunity to question, to research and to formulate an opinion about topics in question. One can also apply the idea of Distributed Cognition to the wiki, in that knowledge is created by a shared effort instead of single knowall. The back and forth, almost' debate' atmosphere created by the wiki enables students to ponder, research, question and understand instead of being 'bombarded' with what they call 'boring' textbooks. Another benefit of this technology is ease of navigation. With textbooks, when one does not understand something, one has to either research on the net about it, or go to the glossary and find the page number where the topic is located to try and understand topics. This really breaks concentration. The most beneficial two things that I feel about the wiki are that one can easily navigate pages by clicking on links that relate to toics and also that one can post lectures etc in any format. Having access to lectures in word format really helps me study. The biggest problem that I had with wiki is that when I am doing my work that might be incomplete, and someone tries to edit it, they might remove all my information which would then be lost. This is really a problem that needs to be addressed. I do not think that only one person should work on a page at a time, but when two people are editing maybe a chat window could appear between the two users, who could then have a concensus about what should be done with the situation. I also think that one should in the future be able to upload documents of any type, not just iages and media. However, wiki has been a fun learning experience of me, that has not really seemed like too much work. I definately think that wiki should be incorporated into more courses, be utilized for more purposes.
 * Overall impression of wiki towards the end of the course:**