User talk:Courtney 1994

Hello, my name is Courtney_1994. I will be creating and taking part in a Wikibook as part of my project for University. Courtney 1994 (discuss • contribs) 16:15, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #1: What is a good Wiki?
Social media of recent times has become a daily necessity for many people, both for creation in various ways and for the social aspect of keeping in contact with friends and family. As a 23 year old student I have had a lot of experience with social media platforms from using Bebo, Myspace and MSN to the newer social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

As far as sharing using social media goes, I would say the ease of Facebook instant messaging and collaboration via Facebook is the most hassle free and simple way of collaborating whether it be sharing ideas or doing group work, academic or not.

The qualitative differences I have found so far between collaboration and sharing via social media platforms such as the afore discussed and Wikipedia would be most obviously that the interface is completely different. The Wikipedia page is much more simplistic and bare in comparison to the personalisation of other social media platforms. Also with Wikipedia, the user is required to partake in doing something whether it be editing, discussing or even just posting about a topic of some sort unlike that of usual social media where you can just browse and not contribute. The most basic way to word this is to say that the differences are they way in which the user interacts with the platform.

Marker’s 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 Understanding and Engagement elements, it should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band overall.


 * Poor. Among other things, poor entries 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.


 * This post is at the upper end of this grade band, so it's quite clear that improvement will go a long way to attaining a higher mark. 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 (especially for this, perhaps, the Understanding) 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, the content is a little descriptive and there's not much of it. Additionally, making more use of the wiki functionality and markup would go a long way to improving fluidity and functionality of posts. I suspect that, as you become more familiar and proficient with the platform, that this will make a considerable difference.


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

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 16:22, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #2: Visibility and Data Trails
Online visibility is an element of social media which we all seem to think that we have a lot of knowledge of and control over when it comes to using platforms for ones own personal use. Although I myself try to be very careful on what information I put out onto the internet that is personal to me, there is very little that can be considered safe nowadays.

Personally I use Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter as social media platforms to communicate and use generally everyday. With Facebook and Snapchat, I am aware that I am sharing information with, generally, people I know. I have always used the same accounts since setting up these two platforms in my life and the information I share isn’t too private to share. Information about where I live, study and often go can be found on Facebook however nothing is too specific for me to consider a danger. Facebook is now used as almost a newspaper, looking at my newsfeed and seeing what is going on with friends and the world alike is something I do multiple times a day and am unlikely to stop. I don’t contribute much to Facebook apart from the occasional link and photo as there are people who may be sensitive to some information on my Facebook.

As for Snapchat, there is nothing personal shared on this platform apart from photos.

Instagram and Twitter are utilized in a completely different way, much like one of the elements of the Wikibook that we will be working on, these two platforms can relate to an online version of myself and a real life version of myself. Though I do not post anything fake, there is much more mystery hidden in these two platforms in my opinion as those who follow you may not really know you personally. There is an element of being whoever you want to be to an extent.

The online world of social media contains and shares so much information that one can never be certain of where all this this flowing information is going, for example: there are very few people who are truly aware of the small print as it were of social media platforms. The information is susceptible to third parties, nothing is completely private when it comes to Facebook for example.

I myself try to be safe but as a user of social media on a daily basis, I am aware that my information though only meant to be shared with those I choose is very likely to be shared elsewhere.

Courtney 1994 (discuss • contribs) 22:38, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #3: Information Overload
With this weeks Wiki Exercise it is a much more personal post, about how I myself cope with certain issues I am faced with using technology.

Information Overload
One of the reading materials for this course, ‘Participating in the Always On Culture’ by Danah Boyd highlights this perfectly but discussing the fact that she, like most people, is always on. This is meaning that she is always online in some manner of the word, and that in order to take a break she needs off time which is stopping herself from using the likes of social media, this too is what most people nowadays tend to do. I myself feel that this is a very valid piece of reading and concept for the generation of people who stay online, whether it is social media, work or education based. I, myself, am very aware of how often I am online, the mindless social media use and often work requires being online both for communication and for rota checking. These two elements alone are extremely distracting when online, especially combining the educational element. It is extremely easy to be distracted when I really need to focus on university work, there are so many other things offered to us on the internet that even social media becomes the least of our worries. We are so connected to technology whether it be a laptop or a phone/tablet. Technology is literally in our hands on a day to day basis so to say this wasn’t a distraction would be unrealistic. The information being offered to us daily is near insane, we cannot consume the amount of information being thrown at us every time we are online and it makes focusing on what is more important in life very difficult. It is necessary for me to take a break, as Boyd discussed, often so I can centre myself and realize what is important.

Wikibook
Managing the Wikibook alone has been quite manageable with the amount of work and contribution required weekly and to the actual project, I’d be inclined to say I’ve enjoyed it so far as there is a social aspect clearly to the also educational aspect of learning what I am writing about. However, coping with this workflow from both this and other modules has been extremely hard, for example I have an essay due the day after the end date for the Wikibook project. I’ve been taking time out of each day to write up notes on what I would like to add to the Wikibook and contributing where I can on the discussion page. I’ve found it necessary to check the Wikibook constantly for updates but I guess with how often we are online, that is time well spent rather than time wasted reading through mindless drabble?

Wiki Exercise #4
To begin with communication via email seemed like it would be making the situation much more difficult so we begun by setting up a Facebook chat however we only spoke via this to begin with to know what page we were doing, the rest was done in the Wikibooks discussion.

In comparison to other collaborative assignments I have taken part in in the past this specific assignment ended up being very good in terms of group work and participation as instead of constantly having to meet in person it was easy to see the progress of the group. Sharing academic links and ideas was simple and you knew it would be taken into account whereas it may not in other ways of doing group work.

The collaboration and engagement was great in this assignment as everything was taken into account and further discussed on the discussion page. For this Wikibook assessment there were a lot of things that could be considered quite problematic for the generation we are currently in.

I found that as a communication platform things could be a lot easier, for instance with Facebook as a communication platform, we have the opportunity to be updated instantly when people are communicating as the phone app is used by most people these days. Hoping that someone has posted or replied to your comments when logging into Wikibook was a tiresome process.

Using the peer reviewing process was quite a different experience as far as academic assignments go however it was quite useful to know that ones thought process was along the same line and in fact correct.

Content (weighted 20%)
The Introduction section here is a little perfunctory, but the main Concepts section is where all of the key sections are mapped out. Each section has its own descriptive short paragraph, summarising the discussion and concept in fairly neat and concise ways. The overall effect of this is that the chapter is given a sense of narrative and structure from the outset. Whilst the discussion in various sections doesn’t always live up to this, and there are one or two inconsistencies, this ought not to diminish too much for the achievements evidenced here.

As mentioned, the sections themselves generally contain good content, but there are inconsistencies regarding the strength of argument, and citation of sources. An obvious example of this would be the first history section, for which citation of sources doesn’t occur until the paragraph on the 1990s!

The unusual step of including a survey and posting the results here is an extremely useful one. Something that absolutely HAS to be thought through in ALL future work is that if one is conducting a survey (even if for demonstration purposes, as included here) or indeed ANY work with people, one must go through an ethics approval process – this is to ensure no harms (relative or absolute) occur for researchers or participants. This process will become more apparent later in the degree programme, particularly in final year projects. The use of interwiki links connecting all of the sections of the chapter together is both very useful and evidences good levels of project management, delegation of workflow, and joined-up collaboration. One thing that would have benefitted the chapter enormously, is if these interwiki links could have been extended to include more reference to other chapters in the book. For example, you have a subsection on Surveillance uses – there could have been interwiki links to various relevant sections in other chapters (especially, perhaps, Privacy in a Digital Age chapter).

Plenty of evidence of reading, secondary research and application of ideas from peer-reviewed sources, as well as other sources from popular culture and journalistic materials. This does tend to vary quite considerably from section to section, however, with some sections oddly drawing from newspaper online articles around topics for which there are materials available in the further reading lists (the subsections on internal effects, the Google effect and others, where there are some obvious aspects of that reading e.g. Vaidhyanathan and his book on the Googlization of Everything). Excellent section on FOMO.

The references section evidences research, reading and sharing of resources. However, the depth and range of sources could be considerably improved.


 * Your contribution to the book page gives a deficient brief overview of the subject under discussion in your chosen themed chapter. There is a qualified familiarity with concepts associated with your subject, and the grasp of conceptual, factual and analytical issues tends to be limited and insecure. The primary and secondary sources you found about the chapter’s themes lack a secure basis.

Wiki Exercise Portfolio (Understanding weighted 30%)
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 overall (and particularly in relation to Understanding and Engagement elements), that should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band, relative to the 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.


 * Reading and research:
 * evidence of critical engagement with set materials, featuring command of a fair range of relevant materials and analyses
 * some evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material
 * Argument and analysis:
 * articulated and supported argument through judgement relating to key issues, concepts or procedures
 * some evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position);
 * some evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections);
 * some evidence of independent critical ability

Engagement (weighted 50%)

 * No evidence from contributions to both editing and discussion of content (i.e. volume and breadth of activity as evidenced through contribs)
 * No engagement with and learning from other Wikipedians about the task of writing/editing content for a Wikibook
 * Little or no use of discussion pages