User talk:Amy Wardle

This page is used for assessed work --Amy Wardle (discuss • contribs) 12:05, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

WIKI EXERCISE ONE
With thousands of Apps available to us, I can guarantee we all have that one App which we do not want to admit using. Embarrassingly for me, it is the Daily Mail App. Now I am aware this is not the best source of news are there are better platforms available but there is something so addictive about that App. The interesting thing about news Apps is it raises the question; do more people read the news because it is more widely accessible to us?

Personally, I believe more people (especially young people) are engaging with the news more through platforms such as social media and Apps. With the Daily Mail App you can essentially cater the news to your preferences which is why I think I find it so appealing. For example, the news is split into different categories- main news, TV showbiz etc- so if one day you are wanting to read about celebrities you just click on the TV showbiz section and it is all laid out very simply with pictures. This is a lot easier than reading the newspapers or watching the news which is why I think younger people engage with it more. News is also constantly featuring on Twitter and Facebook news feeds making it easier to share with your friends meaning it is reaching a larger audience which is something I find fascinating.

Obviously, there are other news Apps such as BBC News or Sky News which would definitely be more reliable but if you're like me and like to read about which celebrity almost fell in a puddle (no joke that actually was a story once) > Puddle Gate then the Daily Mail App is the place for you!

Here is the link to the App if I've convinced you to check it out for yourselves Daily Mail mobile App

--Amy Wardle (discuss • contribs) 16:50, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

COMMENTS

Hi Amy_Wardle! I found your article very interesting to read about how we all have that one app we would pretend we don't religiously use... for me embarrassingly it would be the BBC weather app! I find myself clicking on this app automatically when I wake up in the morning before I even get up to look out the window as what the weather is like. Plans for the next day are based around after I have looked to see what the weather is going to do.

I often find it funny how this app may alter what i plan to do! I also find it interesting how you say you use the daily mail app for entertainment rather than news! As our technology now constantly allows us to update and refresh as much as we like, we often find ourselves intwined with small insignificant "gossip" stories which we want to share with all our friends. Unlimited access to technology allows us therefore to follow these stories and become engrossed, which often causes us to miss out on the important news stories which may actually matter to our society.... but the use of our smart phones allows us to use them more for entertainment like you said, rather than sitting reading "serious" stories in the newspapers! KZillwood02 (discuss • contribs) 22:48, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

This is so true I really only do use it for an entertainment purpose which I'm not sure if thats a good or bad thing? Because I certainly pay more attention to entertainment stories but at the same time I am not oblivious to the main news stories and what is going on in the world- Thanks for your comment --Amy Wardle (discuss • contribs) 11:31, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I thought this was an interesting read as I also use the Daily Mail app! I agree that BBC news is more reliable news source app and I get notifications on breaking news, but the Daily Mail is my favourite for entertainment news. On social media, for example, more often than not entertainment news is being shared off the Daily Mail website and app due to how easy it is to navigate and work. It's a good read when you're not looking to engage with anything too serious and it's light heartedness makes it great ti use to pass the time. SophieNHayes (discuss • contribs) 11:27, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree with everything you are saying because I certainly do go on Daily Mail when I'm waiting for a bus or have nothing else to really do so i guess it is a way to pass the time, which is quite sad because really there are probably more exciting things I could be doing to pass time! Nevertheless I always find myself coming back to the App- its a habit! --Amy Wardle (discuss • contribs) 11:31, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Gossip is addictive!! But I know what you mean about apps you don't want people to see, they tend to be in a little homepage of themselves for me so that people don't go looking! If anything seeing the puddle story has made me want to download the app more! There is something really satisfying with prying into others lives- I know I shouldn't say that! You've really sold it on the idea that you know its not the most reliable however you can scroll through a multitude of stories and for me your guilty pleasure seems semi educational and very fun! Well done. Thegirlwiththebluehair (discuss • contribs) 11:51, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

The Daily Mail app is definitely on a page by itself hidden from anyone else haha. I'm so nosy so find all the entertainment stories so interesting and addictive, I guess it could be worse at least i am getting my daily dose of news- Thanks for your comment --Amy Wardle (discuss • contribs) 11:31, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi --Amy Wardle,how did you add references to your article? Pamela.nx (discuss • contribs) 15:46, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise 1: Formative Feedback
Your reflection hints at some interesting questions that have been part of the module, but it would be useful to see an more critical engagement with the content. For example, you suggest that the Daily Mail app is a guilty pleasure and that this encourages readers to consume news, but thinking this through in terms of 'always on culture' (e.g. people taking pictures of celebrities 24/7) would enhance your discussion. There's some evidence of competence using wiki markup, but it would be worth thinking through ways of embedding links throughout your writing rather than leaving them all to the end. Your comments show engagement with colleagues' ideas, but don't forget to sign them with 4 tildes.

A post of this standard roughly corresponds to the following grade descriptor: Satisfactory. Among other things, satisfactory entries may try to relate an idea from the module to an original example, but might not be very convincing. They may waste space on synopsis or description, rather than making a point. They may have spelling or grammatical errors and typos. They might not demonstrate more than a single quick pass at the assignment, informed only by lecture and/or cursory reading. They may suggest reading but not thinking (or indeed the reverse). The wiki markup formatting will need some work. Sprowberry (discuss • contribs) 10:07, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Visibility and Online Footprint
It is actually quite scary how much information strangers can find out about you just by searching your name into Google. As a little experiment I Googled myself (we have all done it!) to see what the results would be. Shockingly but probably not surprisingly, my twitter handle and Facebook where the first two links to appear. Now I'm not stupid and I know when you post something online it can be seen by pretty much anyone but I have made both my Twitter and Facebook completely private to anyone that I am not friends with. Therefore, in my head I presumed that if my settings were private and if I googled myself nothing would come up... I'm not famous just yet.

My most used sites where I would say I'm most visible are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Having said that I am only visible to the lucky few who I am friends with on the sites. With that being said if I went through my Facebook friend list I can guarantee I have people who I know very little about, for example, that friend I once met on holiday or the classic drunken Dusk add where you had a 2 minute conversation in the toilet but at the time think you are BFFS. I do not use Facebook to post status's its mainly to post my photos and look at other peoples photos which is under my control to a certain extent. At the end of the day you can only control what you post online and you can't control what other people do with the things you post. For example, there is the option to share things on Facebook, so if one of my friends shared one of my photos then it could be viewed by all their friends and that is when it is taken out of my control, which is scary because you never really know who you can trust online.

I'm much more chilled out about Twitter because it is not really a place where I post photos and I have a smaller following. I tweet the most random, boring stuff no one would ever want to read or share it anyway. Then again with the whole issue of employers now looking at social media I would never tweet something that could get me into trouble or effect my future. There is also the issue with not being able to control what your friends reply to your tweets and what they tag you in because, correct me if I'm wrong, I do not think there is the option to untag yourself from tweets you have been mentioned in.

Overall, I would say I'm pretty visible online and as far as I can I keep everything private and only to the people I'm friends with on certain sites. Obviously, this is not completely secure which is why you need to be aware anything you do post online can be seen or accessed by anyone. Therefore, you can't be completely free online which is sad because social media should be a place where you can be completely yourself without the worry of it being shared or accessed by people it is not meant for. --Amy Wardle (discuss • contribs) 16:00, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

COMMENTS

You are totally right! It's very scaring realizing how much we can be visible online just by searching our name into Google. This freaks me out, to be honest, because nowadays -- especially 'thanks' to Facebook -- it's very easy to find someone, just by typing a few info about that person. I've always found a lot of people on Facebook in this way I have to admit (maybe the guy or girl you like but you don't actually know, you know? I think we have all done it). I agree about Twitter as well. I used to love it because I considered it like a 'hidden place', different from Facebook, in which I could talk about whatever I liked, even boring stuff, as you said, and not to care too much about who was going to read that. Then I stopped using it because I got bored, but I remember how good it was. I totally liked it more than Facebook, and I still do, even if I don't use it anymore so often. --Nikynikay (discuss • contribs) 11:21, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I definitely agree how it is terrifying how accessible information about ourselves is readily available at the right click of a button. I like how you went about giving a little experiment to yourself to see what your online profile is like. When you talked about how if someone shared a photo of you all of their friends could see it, it got me thinking about those photos you see sometimes on Facebook with a person holding up a sheet of paper saying something like "how fast can this image get around Facebook?". It just made me think that even when you think you are in control of the information you put out to the internet and in creating your online self, you sometimes cannot trust certain people or their intensions with your content. I think that adds a level of fear to a loss of control over information that is rightfully yours. You are also right about who we know on Facebook as we will all have people we barely know, but they are there all the same. It makes it interesting when we being to think why we keep them as friends? Also, I think it is an interesting point when you compare yourself saying you are more chilled on twitter than Facebook. That links to the week 3 lecture on how we have different personas for different relationships in our lives. But I would go further to say that is also applies to social mediums as evidenced by your analysis of feeling more comfortable to be yourself on one media compared to another as they will have different protocols to make you feel that way. User The one behind the pillar (discuss • contribs) 00:23, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

WIKI EXERCISE THREE: INFORMATION OVERLOAD
Undoubtedly, information is one of the most valuable assets in today's society, our resources seem endless but do we really make use of what is available to us? This excess of information is known as an information overload

However, there is only so much information the human mind can process, an overload of information can cause people to feel overwhelmed and easily distracted. This means that the actual task you are meant to do may take 5 times longer because your brain physically can't handle all the information provided and you end up checking Facebook or Snapchat, I know I'm speaking from experience here.

PERSONAL EXAMPLES

Referring back to the WikiBooks project, the discussion page was set up and within days there was a significant amount of information to read through. When I first went on only a couple of people had commented so I felt I took in all the information that was in front of me and was able to give my responses and opinions. However, as time went on and more and more people were commenting the overload of information was causing me slight anxiety and I did in fact find myself becoming distracted just because the pages of information seemed overwhelming. Other people were also getting frustrated and expressing their concerns and I feel we got over this problem by setting all the information out in a table so it was simple and clear to see.

Another example is when I find myself doing essays which involve lots of readings they take me a while because I end up on social media with a severe case of 'FOMO' or Fear of Missing Out After every page I read from an academic source I end up refreshing my Twitter and Facebook news feeds just to make sure I've not missed out on anything in the last 5 minutes! It sounds silly but I feel like i should be rewarding myself after reading a small section because it takes my brain some time to process the amount of information i have just consumed. A way I have found to deal with this is to listen to music whilst I read the information and i have learned to skim the materials and only read the necessary points, however, this did take me a while.

Clearly, we all recognise that there is an unthinkable amount of information out there but we have to accept that it is impossible for us to have an understanding of everything and we simple cannot consume everything available to us. Google is always accessible if we don't know something and there have been times where I have googled an essay question just to see if the answer comes up. I find that motivating myself to get back to the original task i was doing is harder than actually reading the information so its just a case of balancing things out equally and in my case rewarding myself if i have consumed an overload of information. --Amy Wardle (discuss • contribs) 20:05, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

COMMENTS

Hi Amy, great post here! I agree with the point about the point on the discussion page as I also found myself so overwhelmed with the amount of comments that I ended up giving up and checking Facebook instead. I can also really relate with your struggle with writing essays, I also tend to reward myself after writing about one sentence by having a look on Facebook or twitter. I like your idea of listening to some music to help you concentrate as this isn't something I usually do. Have you go any other tips on how to stop yourself from checking social media when you are supposed to be studying? I personally am affected by adverts a lot when I am supposed to be doing uni work as I feel the urge to click on them which leads to me wasting a lot of time, do you feel as though adverts constantly popping up on every website distracts you as well? Kirstyyy smith (discuss • contribs) 19:37, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi, your observation on social media information and how they often function as distractions and excuses for not doing our university tasks I think relates to everyone including myself. But I think that this is our fault because we have abusing tendencies over those social media networks, they are supposed to be a relaxation time but I am sure that checking your news feed every five minutes stops being your leisure time. We shouldn’t forget that we control those media services and the information overload that exists on web in general. Thus we have to train ourselves to know when and how to use them and not abuse them. Because we choose to provide the web with all of these unnecessary and of low quality information and we also choose to waste our time in social media. It’s not the internet or Facebook itself, but the way we use them. A knife in the hands of the burglar takes lives whereas in the hands of a surgeon gives lives. So? Is it the knife itself or the way humans choose to use it? Having in mind Mcluhan it is necessary to train ourselves to know when to extend our hand for a good purpose and when for a bad one. Nikolas135 (discuss • contribs) 21:24, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

WIKI EXERCISE 4 REFLECTIVE ACCOUNT
INTRODUCTION The constant development of new technologies has made it possible to communicate without face-to-face meetings. However, during the Wikibook project it was quickly made evident that communicating online instead of face-to-face does not always work. One of the main issues our group found was the expectation of being online 24/7. Some members in the group expected a reply straight away and would constantly bombard our group chat with messages, which, realistically was very hard to stay on top of. However, we tried to solve this issue by meeting up in person to discuss our thoughts which seemed to work better. In person people can explain their thoughts in more depth and if someone doesn't understand something there was an opportunity to speak up. Therefore, there were both positives and negatives to the Wikibook project which I will explain in greater detail throughout this post.

CONCERNS This projects core principles were related to the concepts surrounding the Civic Web. This is defined, by David Gauntlett, as a network of people collaborating effectively online to create an especially powerful resource or service enabled by people's passions, becoming greater than the sum of its parts. To some extent I agree with this because during the project we were split into smaller groups but part of a larger group. This meant that we could use other people as a source of knowledge and combined together in an online form meant that we had an incredible amount of knowledge which was beneficial for everyone, because everyone could view what others were saying on the wiki discussion page. Although, as briefly stated above this did obviously cause problems. With more people it made it increasingly difficult to keep on top of what everyone was saying, meaning some people were not contributing because they felt overpowered and felt their voices were not being heard. Personally, I think the idea of splitting us into smaller groups worked very well. It made it easier to communicate with everyone and at the same time we were still getting the benefits of a larger group.

ADVANTAGES I certainly gained a lot from this project and it did teach me a few things. I learned that communication is vital and for it to work effectively you had to be willing to constantly check online what was being posted. In order to do this you had to communicate with your group on a regular basis. Personally, I did not find this that hard because I did not have any other work due around the same time so I was able to commit to the project. However, I know others in my group said they found this hard because they were not able to put as much time into it as I was due to other commitments. I also thought that even though it was a group project, at the end of the day you had your own section to write so when the project was finished you could clearly see what your work was. I found this very rewarding and satisfying to know that even though it was a group effort you individually had something to be proud of at the end.

OVERALL In conclusion, I think the project was quite exciting as I had never done anything like that before. Obviously, it was challenging as the majority of people in my group I had never spoke to before this project. I gained some valuable lessons which will benefit me in the future which is a positive. --Amy Wardle (discuss • contribs) 16:22, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Comments
Hi, I completely agree with your concern over being online constantly. I found myself that if I didn't log onto Wikibooks for a couple of hours, I was bombarded with messages and missing out on having a chance to contribute to topics I wanted to. How do you think this could have been improved? Did you enjoy the fact that we had to work as part of a large team? I think that being in a smaller group as well didn't necessarily do me as much good as I felt at times it was an individual task. SophieNHayes (discuss • contribs) 22:07, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

I like your observation about the effect of having smaller face-to-face groups that are part of a larger online network. I think this is a good analogy for how the civic web could be construed in a wider cultural context. Yes, it is a good thing, but only when used in conjunction with genuine face-to-face communication. Without the latter not only is it a logistical nightmare, but we deprive ourselves of what it is to truly learn something. There is no substitute for talking to people, but if we can harness the power of both I think the consequences will be good in terms of things like political participation, art and culture, entertainment etc. The beauty of the civic web is that it is built by and for everyone who uses it. Its a demonstration of the goodness in human nature as more often than not, the people using it want to create something helpful to others, rather than exploiting them. Ted 95 (discuss • contribs) 01:41, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Marker’s Feedback on Wikibook Project Work
You demonstrate an understanding of the basics of wiki markup but this is not coupled with a substantial use of the platform. You were relatively disengaged with colleagues as there were plenty of opportunities to interact through being mentioned by colleagues, but you ignored the majoirty of these chances to build up engagment. The wiki exercises primarily deal in anecdote rather than more substantial engagement with module topics. It would have been good to see more references and links to module themes outside of the final task.

Content (weighted 20%)

 * Your contribution to the book page gives a satisfactory brief overview of the subject under discussion in your chosen themed chapter. There is a fair range of concepts associated with your subject, and an effort to deliver critical definitions. There is evidence that you draw from relevant literature and scholarship, however your own critical voice in the building of a robust argument is slightly lost, perhaps due to a variable depth of understanding the subject matter or over reliance on rote learning. The primary and secondary sources you found about the chapter’s themes cover a somewhat circumscribed range and depth of subject matter.

Understanding (weighted 30%)

 * Reading and research:
 * evidence of limited critical engagement with set material, although most ideas and procedures insecurely grasped
 * evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material limited, displaying a qualified familiarity with a minimally sufficient range of relevant materials
 * Argument and analysis:
 * poorly articulated and supported argument;
 * lack of evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position in discussion);
 * lack of evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections in discussion);
 * evidence of independent critical ability limited, due to the fact that your grasp of the analytical issues and concepts, although generally reasonable, is somewhat insecure.

Engagement (weighted 50%)

 * Evidence from contributions to both editing and discussion of content suggests minimally sufficient standard of engagement (i.e. volume and breadth of activity as evidenced through contribs)
 * Acceptable engagement with and learning from other Wikipedians about the task of writing/editing content for a Wikibook
 * Limited reflexivity and creativity, and a somewhat insecure management of discussion pages

Overall Mark % available on Succeed

FMSU9A4marker (discuss • contribs) 14:46, 3 May 2016 (UTC)