User talk:BowieAndQueen

Using Wikibooks for a university project BowieAndQueen (discuss • contribs) 17:07, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #1: Online Visibility and Footprint
My online footprint is purposefully limited despite spending a large amount of time online. I do make use of various social networks, primarily Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit, however the number of posts I’ve made on these networks is rather small despite the amount of time I spend online. This is due to a paranoia about my personal data and the potential footprint or paper trail that can be left online. Primarily I use these accounts for their instant messaging functionality rather than public posting.

Social Media posting can be very dangerous for users for a number of reasons. By now most people are becoming aware of how valuable data can be and how many social networks are taking advantage of the data that users give them and so I believe it’s advisable to minimise the amount of online posting people make until data protection law becomes more secure. This actually concerns me despite my low number of posts due to the amount of data about me that could be found within instant messaging apps. Like most people, I use instant messaging clients as my primary means of communication with my friends, and although all of the information within these messaging clients are private, I’m sure that data could be easily reviewed by the social media companies themselves and whoever else they sell data to.

I believe the amount of information about me online is quite limited compared to many others. At most my profiles (which are typically made as private and inaccessible as possible) would allow other users to see a handful of pictures of myself, and a few posts about my dogs as well as pictures of them. Frankly, my online profiles provide far more information about my pets than myself and so I feel my information is for the most part useless to any companies that would acquire it.

Another major concern with online profiles is how they are now likely to be reviewed by employers when users are applying for jobs. This is where a lot of people’s posting can present an issue. Profiles with hundreds of pictures of the user on drunken nights out or posting angry gossip about others, aren’t going to look good to any potential employer and so I think it’s advisable to carefully curate what information you’re posting online, rather than posting impulsively as many users do.

Overall I would say my online posting is fairly safe and the data I submit to social networks isn't particularly useful and I would advise others to similarly keep their online posting as limited as possible.

Instructor Feedback on Wiki Exercise #1
Posts and comments on other people’s work, of this standard, roughly corresponds to the following grade descriptor. Depending on where your actual mark is in relation to the making criteria as outlined in the relevant documentation, it should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band overall:


 * 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.


 * This work is at the upper end of this grade band, so there’s clearly room for improvement here. I think in order to engage with the wiki exercises a bit more, it might be useful for you to look at the Grade Descriptors and criteria in the module handbook to get more of an idea of how to hit those targets. Less instrumentally, and more in relation to this particular post, making more use of the wiki functionality and markup would have gone a long way to improving fluidity and functionality of posts. I suspect that, if you become more familiar and proficient with the platform, that this would have made a considerable difference.


 * Re: responses to other people’s posts – none undertaken. This would effectively halve your mark in assessed work.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 12:06, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #1: Online Visibility and Footprint Reply
I think that the main argument in your response to the Wiki Exercise is a very valid and interesting one. The introduction is interesting to me as I am a very avid social media user and constantly post and share photos with friends and family. Although I have my accounts set to private, your discussion makes me nervous as to whether I should be posting this content at all. The main reason I use social media is to keep up with friends and their lives regardless of where they are in the world. Seeing photos and posts from them makes me feel connected and still a part of their life, as I wish the same for them to feel about the content I post. However, reading your in depth argument about the dangers of posting information, I am beginning to reconsider wether this connectedness is really all that good.

I have to also agree with your post about employers. I do think that because information is so easily accessible it makes it almost too easy for potential employers to online 'stalk' you and try and figure out what you are like. For people on a non-private setting and people who post lots of drunken antics online I can see how this would be an issue as it may bring up questions about your character. However I think that if people stick with a general privacy setting, just a profile photo and possibly bio would be seen and so should not affect your employability chances.

Overall I think if you stick to a fairly privatised social media presence then your data should hopefully remain in safe hands however one needs to watch out what they are posting and who can see their posts as having such a lot of content and information on yourself online can fall into the wrong hands.

Tessanotyourseminar (discuss • contribs) 23:31, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #1: Online and Visibility and Footprint Reply #2
First of all, I love your user name. I am a huge fan of both Bowie and Queen. I admire the fact that you scarcely post. In this day and age, especially among our age group, not having a large social media presence has to be a conscious choice. I respect your reluctancy to succumbing to peer pressure and posting a bunch of pointless hoopla like everyone else.

My only concern is that in my experience, interactions with people in real life, who dont have a social media presence tend to raise red flags. It is a sad reality that people raise an eyebrow when they meet someone and learn they cant follow that person on Instagram. There is a level of comfort in skimming through a persons profile. It makes us feel comfortable and safe, like we know you. This is ridiculous because the person posting gets to choose what they post and could fabricate anything to look a certain way, yet we find a social media presence way more comforting than the latter.

One example is one year in college, I was invited to a date party at a frat through a friend of a friend. I was told my dates name and the first thing I did was look him up on Facebook. He had absolutely no social media presence. I couldn't track him down on an social media. My friends were worried about me even going to the date party due to the only information we had on him was a name, and the fact that we had a mutual friend. After meeting him, it turns out he grew up on a farm and never saw the use of social media. Its really sad that my friends and I were truly scared to meet him thinking something would be wrong with him when really, he was more present and content with life that we probably were.

I am specifically interested in your weariness against potential employers seeing your social media. I have the same paranoia, but as someone who wants to work in social media marketing, my weariness is almost the opposite. I too, refuse to participate in online drama. I also do not post anything inappropriate. I wont even post a curse word, let alone alcohol or something worse. But on the flip side, I feel a pressure to make sure my social media profiles are active, trendy, and represent the best version of myself. This is for someday when I am trying to get a job as a social media marketer, my employer could use my profiles to gage my personality, my skills, and my awareness of trends. Ryleyfred (discuss • contribs) 22:06, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #2: To What Extent Are My Online and Offline Identities Aligned?
One interpretation of Identity is that it is a performance. One’s identity is a construction made from the actions one takes in an attempt to influence how others see them, and the interpretation of those actions by others. The internet allows for that performance to be far more controlled than real world interaction and, in theory, allows users to clinically design their identity. This isn’t really the case as social media has forced a sense of conformity into people’s online identities and inhibited the designed identities that were present in earlier eras of the internet, however the way that people present their identities still presents a danger for many other users.

In the early days of the internet, an online identity could be easily formed and controlled. Before social media, it was common for online interactions to be partially anonymous, as it was more common to go by a screen-name than to publish one’s own identity on an online forum. This is a basic example of constructing one’s online identity as users could infer small pieces of information based on the name’s they have chosen. Take for instance, a user presents themselves online with the rather generic title: “MovieGuy12”, there’s an immediate impression made on any users that read that name, who would likely infer that this user is passionate about films and is likely knowledgeable of cinema and may be open to an online discussion or debate about film. When screennames were common, it was easier for users to present their constructed identity to others. However, this of course came with its own problems. The anonymity of the early internet made it easier for users to construct any type of identity. An extreme example of this would be “catfishing”, users creating fake identities online for nefarious purposes.

In the current state of the internet, the previously mentioned anonymity is for the most part gone. With the introduction of social media, users are now happy to publish elements of their real-world identity as you would expect them to in person. However, the possibility for a constructed identity is still present. When users post information online, it’s a selective representation of themselves. Facebook and Instagram profiles in particular are idealised representations of people’s lives that may not match the user’s real identity. If a user views a profile full of pictures from nights out and holidays, they may infer that the person whose profile they are viewing is very social and adventurous when that isn’t necessarily the case, that profile could be of someone who spends six days a week in front of the television, but that information isn’t present because no one willingly posts their faults online. The negative elements of a person’s identity are just as important as the positive, but the online identity typically won’t include the negative, rather the online identity is the “best-self”, an identity that has been carefully constructed by the user to reflect their ideal self.

This is dangerous as one’s real identity can be formed and influenced based on others, and now that social media is so core to people’s lives, they are constantly being exposed to fake identities that present unachievable lives. For example, a common complaint about social media is the impossibly high beauty standards presented by Instagram influencers. Some Instagram accounts present insanely glamorous lifestyles and manipulated imagery to make users look like they have incredible lives. These are exaggerated identities that others will want to imitate which can lead to all sorts of issues regarding people’s body image and sense of self, and so the constructed identities present online can be a real danger to users.

Wiki Exercise #3: Annotated Bibliography (Part B)
'''Cocq,C. 2016:"Exploitation or Preservation? Your Choice! Digital Modes of Expressing Perceptions of Nature and the Land",The Environment in The Age of The Internet: Activists, Communication and the Digital Landscape P.53-74'''

In this article Cocq analyses how digital media can effect the way users perceive the environment and how social media can be utilized for environmental activism. The author aims to prove that online media can alter change peoples perception of environmental issues by providing a case study on a particular online movement in which an activist group in Sweden used online networks like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter to draw attention to a problematic British Mining company, Beowulf Mining, that were attempting to disrupt their local environment. This article is useful to my research as it provides a detailed example and analysis of an online environmental activism campaign and provides a balanced take on how effective online activism can be. The main limitation of this article is that it is entirely focused on a single case of online activism and so has a very limited scope and makes little reference to any other successful or failed online campaigns. This article will be useful to my essay and will likely be used as a supplementary reference when analyzing social media activism in a broader context, however it's scope is too small to be a core element of the essay.

Wiki Exercise #4: What are Wikis?
A “wiki” as defined by Wikipedia itself is “a website on which users collaboratively modify content and structure directly from the web browser”. In less formal terms, Wikipedia, Wikibooks and the many other “Wikimedia” sites are free online spaces in which any number of users can contribute and edit research on almost any topic. The various forms of Wikimedia have been celebrated as an invaluable resource of free information however there has always been a lingering cynicism towards Wikimedia, particularly as an educational resource, due to its openness.

In particular, Wikibooks has found a place in higher education as tool for collaborative research projects, allowing groups of students to work together online to develop large bodies of work for classroom assessments. Research into the use of Wikibooks in education has found mixed responses from students and educators. In 2009 a research group from the University of Thessaly conducted a study into the usage of Wikibooks in universities, focusing on an undergraduate class of 27 students taking a course on how to use web 2.0 technologies and how they responded to a Wikibooks project. The group found that the students encountered a number of issues with this style of assessment. Namely, the perceived stigma against editing other students work, the mix of writing ability and styles leading to an incoherent final text, the difficulty in validating the accuracy of each other’s work, and the difficulty of covering topics not adequately explained in the traditional classes. They also found that little to no discussion took place on the wiki platform.

Having taken part in a Wikibooks project I find these concerns to be an accurate representation of the Wikibooks classroom experience. Students are likely to be unsure of their own contributions without a guiding authority, which then leads to an anxiety regarding the editing of other students work. If students are unsure of themselves, they aren’t going to see themselves as being in the position to alter or mediate others work. Similarly, the larger the group of contributors, the less coherent the overall text will be due to the abundance of writing styles. Finally, the relationship between the wiki projects and the classroom materials provided over the course of a semester does lead to issues, for example, contributions based on classroom materials early in the semester have a greater chance of being expanded and edited over time compared to topics covered at the end of a semester.

The same research group later conducted a study into the community aspects of Wikibooks and the collaborations taking place on the wiki platform outside of the classroom. They did find that users often utilised discussion pages and community features of the Wikibooks platform when developing their projects in contrast with how the students used the platform, however it is worth noting their findings into the number of collaborators involved in the writing of Wikibooks. They found that the majority of Wikibooks users didn’t work with others in producing their Wikibook projects, rather the books themselves were solo efforts, with collaboration limited to discussion pages and the apprenticing of others in how to use the wiki format. This should be taken into account when considering the group size for students working on a single Wikibook project as their previous research did show that the large groups of contributors did cause issues with the final project.

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK: ENGAGEMENT ON DISCUSSION PAGES & CONTRIBS
Grade descriptors for Engagement: Engagement on discussion pages, and contribs of this standard attain the following grade descriptor. Whereas not all of the elements here will be directly relevant to your particular response to the brief, this descriptor will give you a clearer idea of how the grade you have been given relates to the standards and quality expected of work at this level:
 * Poor. Among other things, poor contributions may just offer links without real comment or apparent point. They may offer nothing more than poor-quality synopsis or description of material of dubious relevance. They may have serious clarity problems (including dead links, random graphics) which affect comprehension (or even worse, admin warnings or take-down notices for copyright infringement). They might be off-topic, private trivia, or of unclear relevance. The wiki markup formatting will be of a poor standard.

As instructed in the labs, and outlined in the assessment brief documentation, students should be engaging at least once a day, for the duration of the project. The following points illustrate how this engagement is evaluated.

Evidence from contribs to both editing and discussion of content (i.e. volume and breadth of editorial activity as evidenced through ‘contribs’). These are primarily considered for quality rather than quantity, but as a broad guideline:
 * Each item on a contribs list that are 3000+ characters are deemed “considerable”
 * Each item on a contribs list that are 2000+ characters are deemed “significant”
 * Each item on a contribs list that are 1000+ characters are deemed “substantial”
 * Items on a contribs list that are <1000 characters are important, and are considered in the round when evaluating contribs as a whole because of their aggregate value

Overall:
 * The two substantial contribs saved you here. Otherwise, there is a very inconsistent pattern (and low volume) of contributions during the project period. Although certainly not the level or volume one would expect at this level of a degree programme, there is some evidence of effort to engage, all being said – and what is here is fairly good, but it really is a case of too little, and a tendency to leave things too late.

Engagement with and learning from the community on Discussion Pages
 * Evidence of peer-assisted learning and collaboration
 * Poor
 * Evidence of reading, sharing, and application of research to the essay
 * Poor
 * Evidence of peer-review of others’ work
 * Poor

Reflexive, creative and well-managed use of Discussion Pages
 * Clear delegation of tasks
 * Poor
 * Clearly labelled sections and subsections
 * Poor
 * Contributions are all signed
 * Satisfactory

Civility. Your conduct is a key component of any collaboration, especially in the context of an online knowledge-building community. Please respect others, as well as observe the rules for civility on wiki projects. All contribs are moderated.
 * Satisfactory

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 16:02, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Instructor Feedback on Wiki Exercise Portfolio
Posts and comments on other people’s work, of this standard, roughly correspond to the following grade descriptor. Depending on where your actual mark is in relation to the making criteria as outlined in the relevant documentation, it should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band overall:


 * Good. Among other things, good entries will make a clear point in a clear way. They will relate concepts to original examples in a straightforward fashion. They will make effective use of the possibilities of the form (including links, as well as perhaps copyright-free videos and images, linked to from Wiki Commons). They may also demonstrate a broader understanding of the module's themes and concerns, and are likely to show evidence of reading and thinking about the subject material. The wiki markup formatting will be very clear.


 * This work is at the upper end of this grade band, and represents a very well written set of exercises and responses to the assessment briefs for the portfolio. Making more use of the wiki functionality and markup would have gone some way to improving fluidity and functionality of posts. I suspect that, if you become more familiar and proficient with the platform, that this would make a difference.

.
 * Re: responses to other people’s posts – these are especially good. You have tended to frame some of your responses fairly reflectively, but always situated alongside research, which is really good. You have also engaged in discussion in an open and critical way (that is to say, you've responded to what other people are saying and are contributing meaningfully to discussion - arguably the civic element of wiki that you ought to be thinking about, which you clearly are).

General:
 * Reading and research: evidence of critical engagement with set materials; evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material – all v. good.


 * Argument and analysis: well-articulated and well-supported argument; evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position); evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections); evidence of independent critical ability – again, all very good.


 * Presentation: good use of wiki markup and organisational skills generally.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 16:50, 1 May 2019 (UTC)