User talk:Handkel

Wiki Exercise #1 - Traveling with Airbnb

Traveling the world can offer you some great opportunities and adventures. You can get to get to know new people, cultures and even start to learn a new language. All those new experiences can give you a new refreshing perspective on how you see the world and that’s why more and more people start to travel more often. But it is not as easy as it sounds. There are a lot of things you have to take into account, just as how to get there, where to live and what to explore and all of those things mostly involve a high travel budget. There is a Website, called Airbnb, and I think it is a really great opportunity combining a lot of things. Basically it is an online community where you can rent accommodations as a traveler with a low budget, or even if you are a business traveler seeking a more exclusive experience than just living in a hotel room. Once you registered for free, you need to type in your location, your travel date, how many persons you are and for example if you would prefer a private room, or a whole accommodation for yourself. In example Airbnbalso offers you the possibility to book a houseboat, a castle, a treehouse or even a whole island as an accommodation. The website then shows you many different accommodations with additional information on it, such as reviews, the price or the environment. If you are interested, you can easily contact the host, to book the accommodation. In addition to that, I need to say, that there are a lot of hosts and not every accommodation is suitable for everybody, but it can be a really good option to travelers who seek for an other experience than just living in a hotel room. Airbnb also gives you the possibility to list your own accommodation on the website and earn some extra money. In conclusion I think that Airbnb is a really useful website to everybody who´s desire it is to travel and to get a more local experience for only a low budget, even if it is just a weekend trip. In addition to that I got a link to an article from the guardian, where a men is writing about his Airbnb experience (positive as negative) and some additional information about how Airbnb works and about its development in the past few years. --Handkel (discuss • contribs) 12:10, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Marker's Comments

 * A fairly well-written entry. It would have been useful to try to feed this into the themes and concerns of the module e.g. the space-time compression effects of both communications technologies and the commercial aspects of global travel which seem to converge in this phenomenon. There are also aspects of anonymity which feed into this – the website affords people the opportunity to sublet (generally, a practice prohibited in rental agreements) without recourse to legal action; and there has been some anecdotal evidence of the site being used as a predatory practice. Drawing down from the materials encountered on the module, you could have made better use of the wiki markup by embedding links to reading, and also of course, to Wikipedia articles covering factual information


 * 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.

RE: Comments

 * These are on time and ok - however, they are quite short and need development in terms of content, scope and reference to module themes. Remember that your comments on other people's work is weighted as heavily as your own post when it comes to grades, and what has happened in this case is that your overall mark for the exercise would have been brought down significantly. GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 15:22, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

COMMENT: This sounds like a really useful website, I've wanted to see more of the world for a while now but money has always been an issue. I also really like the idea of meeting people through it, so you're not just interacting with hotel staff. I'll definitely try and use this at some point. Have you used the website yourself? Got any experiences you could share? - ReluctantCyborg (discuss • contribs) 13:38, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello user:ReluctantCyborg. I have used this website once, when I did a trip to the Netherlands. I booked an accomodation for 4 people, the host was really nice and we enjoyed the environment. Our host also gave us additional information about the city, the bus schedule and about places we should visit. It was a great experience, but I also heard from friends of mine, that they had some bad experiences with it. But I would really recommend it to you, if you like to travel and only have a low budget, like we did. --Handkel (discuss • contribs) 13:58, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

I have never used this website, but it sounds really interesting. I like it, when you have the opportunity to choose some options, like the amount of money you want to pay, the residential area or in what city do you want to live in. I also really like that you give an advice to an evaluation of Airbnb, because I think it is really important to know how it works in reality and whether you really get what you got promised. I think this could be a good opportunity to get a great travel. Mausjjudith (discuss • contribs) 09:44, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

,,The web is listening every time you use it´´ - Wiki exercise #2
Through using the internet, no matter what platform or website, you are leaving a digital footprint in the world wide web. Have you ever thought about how visible you are online ? Or what kinds of information are available about you, who you are sharing it with and how much of this information is under your control? I have. Technology is ubiquitous. We are always online. But what does that even mean? According to Dana Boyd, that means that we are always connected to the network and can get information whenever we need it. I cannot exclude myself. I have a Facebook as well as an Instagram and Google Plus Account. But I tried my best to protect my privacy. Therefore my Facebook or Instagram Profile cannot be found, when searching my name on google. Only my friends can see the things I post on those social media platforms, but does that mean that my data is safe? I don’t think so. I think our data is more public than we assume and I believe that the data is stored somewhere and out there, available to anyone who would really try to get information about me. This Website, called Internetsociety.org is really great and I wanted to share it with you. It is explaining the Digital Footprint, how and where we leave it, and it gives some advice about how to take back control of our online identity. There is a quote on this website and I think that it exactly describes the problem of the digital footprint, it says that : ,, The Web is listening every time you use it´´.

--Handkel (discuss • contribs) 11:34, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

COMMENTS
Feel free to share your opinion about my posts. If you find any spelling or grammar errors just let me know. --Handkel (discuss • contribs) 13:30, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #3 - Information overload
Since the world wide web exists, people are constantly sharing information with each other. As Manuel Castellsdescribes it, technology does not only change our communication but also ourselves, since it is much easier to get informed about things you are interested in. We use the technology and especially the internet to facilitate things that are already there and it is way easier to inform yourself in the internet than going to a book store searching for literature that may help you. If you think about it, there is a very high amount of information out there. Even if you just google the word ,,information´´ you receive 8.550.000.000 results for it. So perhaps, one could even say that there is an information overload. But what does that term mean? It means that ,,Stress induced by reception of more information than is necessary to make a decision (or that can be understood and digested in the time available) and by attempts to deal with it with outdated time management practices.´´ So in order to find the information that is really useful, you need to put in much more effort. Another point is the reliability of the resources, in the internet you cannot be sure, if the resource or the website is really reliable. Therefore I mostly choose to work with the search engine Google scholar, which is kind of an academic library, providing only academic resources.  --Handkel (discuss • contribs) 12:00, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Comments
Hi, do you think that the information overload leads us to permanently obtain the information we don't need, or is it possible that the overload can also be an advantage? GABRIEL9 (discuss • contribs) 11:07, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi there, I think this is a very interesting question. Well I do believe that there is very important and useful information out there, I just think it is very hard to find and to decide wether the information we are getting is the important one or wether there could still be something more important and useful out there. So in order to answer the question I think that the mass of information we are confronted with, rather confuses us and makes it more difficult to decide if these information are really useful.--Handkel (discuss • contribs) 11:17, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Wow, it is interesting to know how many results you receive for googleing one simple word. But it makes us feel that we don’t know how and where to start to find the right information. I found out that this information overload leads to less efficiency, because humankind is not able to handle this information overload we are faced with the whole day. Look up this interesting article. To know what resource is reliable it is also important to know who it is that has written the entry. Most qualified resources are always academic ones and often articles or publications published from reliable newspapers. Besides it is always important to check your information by reference to one or two other resources. Mausjjudith (discuss • contribs) 11:29, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Hello Judith, thanks for sharing this article with me. I totally support and understand your point of view. Andrea always check your references, but even though you still need to check it twice , Google scholar seems to me like a really nice option when searching for academic stuff.--Handkel (discuss • contribs) 11:17, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

I really like the angle you took with your article.I Especially like how you defined Information overload.The definition makes me conjure up conspiracy theories, like who is really controlling the internet? and is the process of overloading information a means to distract and confuse us from understanding or seeing the really important things that we would be more focused on if we got the internet out of the way?.Like if the Internet were around earlier would the world have accomplished all that it has, or would people have been too distracted to make a change and be revolutionary? Pamela.nx (discuss • contribs) 11:55, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

hello Pamela, well I do not think that the intention of the Internet is to distract us from what is really important. I do rather think that there are so many points of view, and so many people who want to share information that this overload exists. And I really do think that the Internet can help us in many ways. But as McLuhan statet, I do also think that technology in general (including the Internet) can transform our experience of the world. Therefore I don't know what would have happened if the Internet was there earlier. But even though the Internet is existent now, we still seem to make huge efforts In developing new technologies and inventions. So therefore i don't think that the Internet is holding us back. I think it just changes the way we deal with things. --Handkel (discuss • contribs) 11:17, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

The experience of participating in the wikibook project
Surveillance and Sousveillance - two words that I have, until that time, never heard before. What do they mean and which scientific theories can one apply to them ? That are only two out of many questions we head to deal with. And with ,,we´´ I mean a group of about 20 students, who are separated into different sub-groups of 4 up to 5 people. Well, I knew from the beginning that this is going to be an difficult task. But actually it worked out pretty good. I think that we got to experience the phenomenon of the so called ,,Collective intelligence´´. According to Pierre Levie it is ,, … a form of universally distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, coordinated in real time, and resulting in the effective mobilization of skills´´. A lot of other projects already have shown that Crowdsourcing and therefore the usage of the collective intelligence can be really useful. A great example might be the climatecolab, where a lot of people participate in one project to improve the outcome. But still, I think that the coordination, especially because most of it had to happen on the wiki discussion page, was the hardest part about this project. It was very difficult to figure out where to get started and to clarify who is going to cover which aspect and who is going to check if the information is really trustworthy? A lot of aspects had to be taken into account. Also I sometimes got kind of lost in the amount of posts on the discussion page, so I sometimes didn’t knew if any plans had changed or how the other groups are doing. Needless to say, that there were complications and misunderstandings, but at the end of the day we all have benefited from the knowledge of each and every one of our group, since we all really tried hard to work on this project collectively. We had to do it in line with a university project, and I think that the outcome was in fact really great, but how many people are actually doing it on their own initiative? I don’t think that there are a lot of people who spend their time with sharing their knowledge with others, in order to improve other people’s work. That’s exactly what also Banaji and Buckingham have discovered. They found out that ‘the Internet’s interactive features are perceived as generally useful and entertaining, but also as banal: they are not seen to provoke extraordinary creativity and socio-political engagement or change in and of themselves.’ That is exactly what I have experienced in this project, if you want to and if you know how, the internet provides a lot of useful tools, but most of the people are only using the internet for the entertainment aspect. I don’t know if I ever will participate in a project like this again, but I think that it was a really great experience, that helped me understand, how collectively working together can have a great impact on the outcome of your work. --Handkel (discuss • contribs) 14:32, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Comments
Hey Handkel! I also think that having a group task like this, where we had to combine our single knowledge into a collective one, is great. However, I believe that there should be another way of exchanging information rather than using the discussion page. Perhaps, the best thing would have been if we were able to communicate on a selected social media or through an app (viber, whatsapp), agree who's working on what, write our sections, and then ask questions (if we have any) regarding the task. One of the best features to me would have been that we could have had notifications in real time when a person needs some help. In the case with the discussion page, we were not really aware where things start and finish, and like you, I had to start reading from the beginning every single time. If you can improve one thing (method of working, communicating, platform used), what would this be? Cheers! Gvg00001 (discuss • contribs) 23:59, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes I totally agree to what you say, it would be very nice if we would have gotten notifications every time someone edited or added content. But besides that, I really think that it was useful to communicate via the discussion page, since it is way easier than meeting up with all this people in person, since everyone of us has got different time schedules. What would you like to improve about this project then?--Handkel (discuss • contribs) 10:08, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Hey ! Well, personally I would try to make the assessments more related to what we were studying, in terms of using a real social media rather than Wikibooks or Wikipedia. Or I would stick to just writing essays. Gvg00001 (discuss • contribs) 20:15, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Marker’s Feedback on Wikibook Project Work
Main contribs to chapter content include entries on legislation, regulation, and in particular the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill, and the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act for UK. This included a few interwiki links, and external links to various informational websites. The majority of this content is very descriptive, and does not really delve into critically engaged, nor analytical levels of discussion. Contribution is comparatively small in terms of actual word count, and are restricted to the closing days of the project.

Wiki Exercises


 * 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.

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 to a variable standard (i.e. volume and breadth of activity as evidenced through contribs)
 * Satisfactory engagement with and learning from other Wikipedians about the task of writing/editing content for a Wikibook
 * Reflexive, creative and fairly well-managed use of discussion pages using deployment of somewhat limited judgement relating to key issues, concepts or procedures

Overall Mark % available on Succeed

FMSU9A4marker (discuss • contribs) 14:58, 3 May 2016 (UTC)