Williams,+Amanda

My Reflections
=**PART 1**=

When first encountering wiki at the beginning of the course.

I think that wiki is an excellent concept for creating a collaborative learning environment. I believe when Tim Burners-Lee invented the world wide web this is what he hoped would come of it. Having a Wiki space is very positive because it gives people a chance to express something they know a lot about, as well as if they are incorrect about something it can easily be corrected by someone else. Often, Profs say that using Wiki is not a valid source, however I feel that generally wiki is valid however should be backed up by other sources as well.

My expectations for myself on Wiki are relatively low. I want to learn and post as much as I can, however I run under a very tight schedule between work, school. and being a nanny so therefore I think I will not be able to put out as much as I would like.

This is my first experience with a Wiki space. I started off very slow asking a lot of questions, but now I am getting the hang of things and able to post a lot more. I would still like to expand my knowledge on wiki and learn how to make a table of contents and do more fancy things such as use colors and different fonts. Although I am not overly experienced at Wiki, by the end of the course I think I will be comfortable and as an experienced participant I will edit spaces and continue to create my own.

=PART 2=

Think about the following and answer to the best of your ability:

When I want to contribute or change a posting, I often look at the table of contents and see if I can find something that interests me and that I know about. Also, if Im on the net and I find a new service or website that I think other people would be interested in I would contribute it to the wiki.

My thoughts on editing other peoples work depend. If I go to a wiki space and its all decked out and all the info to my knowledge appears to be correct I most likely will not change it. If a page looks like it has been newly added and I feel I can contribute something worth while then I think its ok to add or edit. Also if I created a Wiki with a ton of spelling and grammer errors (probably like this one) I would hope if someone was reading it they would help me by fixing my mistakes. If I saw a page that I felt needed to be arranged I would most likely ask someone else what they think and take advice, because I might like things one way and someone else the other. Its important to take into account how another Wiki user might feel.

I would have to say that I definetly do not check up on the Wiki as much as I should. Time is no excuse, however I constantly have something on the go, as well as I try to maintain somewhat of a social life thus wiki has been known to slip my mind. I know that as things get closer to the final days I will be on much more and contributing as much as I can!! (but i wish i started off the right way!!) Due to this fact, currently no one has changed my Wiki. I could see myself getting upset if I worked long and hard on something and someone totally changed it. However if I was vague in my information or even incorrect I would hope someone would let me know so I could learn from my mistake.

NOTE: After posting this I did experience someone finishing my Wiki while I was sleeping. I started a WIki page in the library and when it closed I went home hoping to finish it the next day. When I went back to it, it was finished in point form. I found it a little upsetting and frusterating only because it wasn't how I wanted it to be, HOWEVER their information was correct so I just let it go and started a new one.

=PART 3= I would say that my views in regards to collaborative learning have slightly changed. In the beginning I thought wiki was a terrific idea; however after dealing with it for a semester I found it to be rather stressful. Having assignments due is one thing, but having an ongoing assignment is a lot of work. I think this ongoing assignment was important for me to learn from because it reminded me that I have terrible time management skills. In the past I have been able to do all school work at last minute, AND I work better that way, I guess I like the pressure. With the wiki I should have thought about budgeting my time better in order to contribute more which would have resulted in a higher grade. With that said, I still feel that wiki in general is a really good idea for a course assignment because it offered so much relevant information throughout the course. I know that when I was studying for the exam or doing my group project that I would constantly look the table of contents to help me define words I didn’t know, as well as I would look at the other peoples wikis as examples of how mine “should” look.

I would suggest that maybe the Wiki project wasn’t waited so heavily, or at least the community section wasn’t. The only reason for this is that different people have different course loads and work schedules so some people just don’t have as much time as others to update. I think that maybe if the content and reflection were worth the majority of the grade and the community worth maybe 5% people would put more time into their work rather then some who just look to update small changes for the sake of the participation mark.

At the beginning of the year I rarely ever used the wiki, however towards the exam I was on all the time to define words and get summaries of things I didn’t really feel like reading from the text book. I thought this to be the most helpful part of the wiki. I found a majority of the students put a lot of time and effort into their pages and that as a result they were good study tools for the exam. I also found the wiki to be productive and helpful as it helped with the question on the exam. Due to the fact that I did face a problem with adding to the wiki I was better able to add suggestions to improving it, such as the font spacing, and color. I think that overall wiki is an excellent idea and that this is the concept that the creator of the internet wanted to see, and I cant wait to see the improvements in the future.

=amandawilliams8= Member since Oct 1, 2006 2:40 pm 46 page edits, 0 message posts My spaces: ccit333, themapsquad

http://www.wikispaces.com/user/view/amandawilliams8

= = =MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS= Co-created The map squad Created theYFLY page. Created the Focus Group page. Started the Web design page.