User talk:HayleyJo87

This is the user page of HayleyJo87 (discuss • contribs) 12:53, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Polly Pocket Collection
I asked for a few Polly Pocket toys when I was younger over Christmases and birthdays, including number two on the list, but like most childhood they, became lost in the trunk of my past. A few years ago my dad found a couple in the garage and brought them over to possibly sell online. Whilst scanning the lists of similar items to price my own, I discovered a Disney Pocahontas set- the Powhatan Tent. As Pocahontas was my favourite Disney leading lady (I had the bed-spread; lunch box; dolls, you name it, I had it), I was filled with nostalgia and quickly snapped it up as a treat. My Polly Pocket collection snowballed from there.

Much to my fiancé’s annoyance, I became addicted and was buying two or three a month because with every new set, there was a different thing to appreciate in the art-work, pint-sized objects and secret nooks. Then similar to my Pocahontas obsession, I moved onto merchandise buying backpacks, Roller-skates, everything and anything Polly branded. I’ve only had to stop collecting because I have run out of space to store them in our flat. At last count in total I have close to 50 items in total. I have three favourites sets. The first is the writer’s suitcase, which I built up the pieces to include the stationary, dolls and the pink and gold embossed paper, which to be in mint condition after 23 years was a rare find. The second is a sleepover set, where Polly and her friend are in polka-dot pyjamas, in the lower part of the shell, there is a button to click and the picture changes on the television and the couch folds down into a bed. On the upper part of the shell, a miniature American fridge-freezer opens which reminds me of midnight munchies during childhood sleep-overs with my best friend. The third one is another sleep-over theme but a miniature dressing table where tiny cups, saucers, hair clips and pyjama wearing dolls, two babies and a black cat are a part of the collection.

My most expensive one was probably the Christmas toy shop which is mint in box that I am now too scared to open but I would not make enough from it to sell in this country so it sits in a suitcase with the others. If my fiancé and I ever get a big enough house, I will showcase them in a class cabinet but for now, I only take them out to admire the detailing when I’m feeling particularly nostalgic. Needless to say my old sets were never put up online after my fondness for Polly and her friends grew.

Did anyone else have Polly Pockets growing up? Which ones were your favourites?

HayleyJo87 (discuss • contribs) 13:24, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Marker’s Comment

 * 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. collectors in relation to online identity or communities, perhaps? 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, although possibly at the lower end, because it could have been much more relevant to the brief:
 * 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 on others’ work

 * These are absent. You have not adhered to the brief. Remember that your comments on other people's work is weighted as heavily as your own post when it comes to grades. Not completing this part of the exercise means that, effectively you are halving your mark. GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 16:30, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Educational Assignment
Hi, what topics do you think we should pick for the assignment? KerryFromThePub (discuss • contribs) 13:30, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #2 Visibility and Online Footprint
Introduction

I do not believe I have an overly gratified online prescence. I have all the regulars: Facebook; Instagam; Twitter; Word Press; Linked In and Pintrest; however, all were as a result of outside pressure to make myself appealing online.

 Online Presence for Career Prospects

I joined the Facebook party quite late on in 2009, originally setting out as a journalistic platform for my online magazine ‘Northern Lass’, a women’s magazine designed for women living in Scotland and the north of England. I was initially against Facebook, staying off as a form of protest over how all-consuming social media seemed to be but in order to get ‘down with the kids’ essentially, I relented and created a Facebook. After initially keeping the Facebook professional with blogs I had written, I joined in with friends and started posting more and more personal content, links and status updates etc. Rather embarrassingly (as I see from the memory function) using text speak; despite not being charged if I went over 141 characters.

When I went back to college after four years working in a call centre, I was amazed that while during my absence, at the increased dependency on creating an online presence in order to build up a professional reputation post education. I was told I had to ‘get’ a Pintrest to pin fashion related ideas and Instagram to follow designers and share pictures on my fashion course. After a disastrous year, where I was always forgetting which way the thread was supposed to go through the needle, I moved onto a writing course. Again, I was told to get a Twitter, build a blog (writing down every follower and status update to get a good engagement marks for my graded unit) and creating a Linked In account to connect with and follow authors, publishing and media professionals.

I often wonder if it weren’t for the pressure from institutions how long it would have taken to set up my own accounts in my own time. Like many media platforms, including just wanting to utilise the wifi in a public space, Pintrest required me to make an online account before I could view people’s pins. Therefore it seems one could say I was what is commonly referred to as the locked in (Lariner, 2011) process by using new social media platforms and creating an online presence if I wanted to get ahead.

Information Under My Control 

Despite my online engagement, I am cautious as to who I share my information with after my aunt reported back to my parents (who don’t have Facebook) what my siblings and I were posting online. This is why privacy settings are beneficial as I can limit what certain people see if I am unsure of how they would react.

Information Outwith My Control 

In contrast, information beyond my control is when I want to download an app, in order to use it, I have to agree to terms and conditions including what the brand has access to on my phone, and these sometimes include friend and profile lists. As I reluctantly agree to the terms and conditions in order to speed up a service, I secretly hope that no harm will come to the access to my friends’ information which a company has forced me to provide.

HayleyJo87 (discuss • contribs) 11:32, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #3 Information overload
Beating the Algorithm

I won’t lie, it is tempting when keying in a new term or phrase in university to enter it into a search engine and choose the first definition you come by. The days of flipping through pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica are gone and since its inception 15 years ago, teachers and scholars alike have drilled it into students not to cite Wikipediabecause due to its collective practices can be proven to be inaccurate. Particularly as Jaron Lanier has proven with the internet’s insistance that he is named as a film director, despite having only made a student film which he jokes will threaten to force upon contributors to prove he is definitely not the regaled film-maker they have made him out to be (Lanier,2006). Whilst it is tempting to take the easy option, I would argue that like Larnier, I agree that ‘accuracy in a text is not enough. A desireable text is more than a collection of accurate references. It is an expression of personality’ (Lanier, 2006).

Passion in Study

No-one has forced us as students to go to university. As adults of (or just about) of age, we have chosen to be in this institution, this one over the thousands across the country, pouring over prospectuses until having settled on these degrees and these modules. So while some terms and phrasing will be unfamiliar, we are acutely aware of the subject matter we are getting involved with. Therefore, when being set essay assignments, we are researching work done by previous theorists with a similar passion in the field. Once we are aware of the basic key terms given to us in lectures, the benefits of reading beyond just the first search result Wikiepedia result is that we can test our knowledge by putting the key phrases into the context of the book or journal article and understanding what they mean. If a theorist has quoted another theorist, then this source can be traced back to their paper and we can perhaps find more useful quotes to develop our essays.

Eliminating Information

One of the key questions I ask myself when eliminating information is – ‘Is this source trustworthy?’ At the moment, I only pin down trustworthy information down to books and journal articles. Where there are some blogs which may seem inspiring, using the right words and flourishes, the majority of the time, it is someone projecting their unproven opinions and theories out into the world. I have yet to distinguish what qualifies as an academic blog but I am hoping this will come with practice. However, it is easy to get caught up in un-academic theorists, especially if you happen to agree with what they are saying and leave a comment in hope to build up a rapport with them, forgetting the task-in hand. It’s therefore useful just to email the link to oneself or save it to your phone home screen when you are not on a deadline.

Counter-Argument

The second thing I would ask myself is – ‘is there a counter-argument?’ this is the same for both acadmic and non-academic work. If you consider the abundance on information as a someone on trial and I am the juror, where does the abundance of proven or viable evidence swing and why? Because let’s face it – no-one wants to be caught posting a weak argument online. Even if it is just in response to a Buzzfeed post.

HayleyJo87 (discuss • contribs) 11:34, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Concepts throughout the module such as Pierre Levy Collective Intelligence where multiple minds with varying degrees of knowledge come together to share their thoughts, ideas and skills and working together simultaneously throughout a wide network, demonstrates the benefits of a collaborative project which if left to one person, would be exhaustive and limited in terms of a new ideas. Furthermore, in terms of tutor feedback from exercise one, peer reviewing class-mates posts, the freedom to organise ourselves into groups and delegate with a decentralised program where one only needs a computer and internet but coming together as an online community, I have found that the project also shows the benefits of being part of what Hans Magnus Enzensberger refers to as emancipatory media.

The flexibility of decentralised programming and Collective Intelligence also feed into Henry Jenkin’s theory of Participatory Culture in ‘which fans and other consumers are invited to actively participate in creation and circulation of new content’ As Christian Fauchs points out ‘ ”participatory culture” pool rescources and combine skills so that collective intelligence emerges as “an alternative source of media power”(Jenkins, 2008,4)’.

Jenkins has been criticised for his overly utopian ideals in Participtory Culture by omitting issues such as ownership, capital and class. However, in my experience of the project as someone who struggled a lot with the WIKI Markup, I found there was the Reading Room (which I used when all my posts kept seemingly disappearing [my error for inputting URLs]) and class-mates as ‘strong support for creating and sharing,’ and ‘informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to the novices.’.

Our group could not meet up face to face due to illness, conflicting schedules and other personal matters; however, I kept in touch with one person from my team. My first blog post had similar content to another person’s which I had only realised after posting. I reached out to my class-mate through the message boards and they responded that while our content was similar we had approached the issues from two different angles so we agreed to put a link on one another’s as a sense of continuity for the viewer.

I took two remaining subjects left in my team’s chosen chapter of Surveillance and Sousveillance but ensured that I made my intentions clear on the relevant message board in case they were already being covered. Having read other class-mates posts on this issue. I had noticed that someone had posted something vague on a section which I wanted to expand upon. I reached out twice to ask if the person needed help but to no avail. I was unaware of the proto-call so I prepared a post and decided if nothing had been posted by 4:59 pm on the deadline day, I would post, which I did.

HayleyJo87 (discuss • contribs) 06:08, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #4 Wikibook Project Reflective Account
Concepts throughout the module such as Pierre Levy Collective Intelligence where multiple minds with varying degrees of knowledge come together to share their thoughts, ideas and skills and working together simultaneously throughout a wide network, demonstrates the benefits of a collaborative project which if left to one person, would be exhaustive and limited in terms of a new ideas. Furthermore, in terms of tutor feedback from exercise one, peer reviewing class-mates posts, the freedom to organise ourselves into groups and delegate with a decentralised program where one only needs a computer and internet but coming together as an online community, I have found that the project also shows the benefits of being part of what Hans Magnus Enzensberger refers to as emancipatory media.

The flexibility of decentralised programming and Collective Intelligence also feed into Henry Jenkin’s theory of Participatory Culture in ‘which fans and other consumers are invited to actively participate in creation and circulation of new content’ As Christian Fauchs points out ‘ ”participatory culture” pool ]sic]rescources and combine skills so that collective intelligence emerges as “an alternative source of media power”(Jenkins, 2008,4)’.

Jenkins has been criticised for his overly utopian ideals in Participtory Culture by omitting issues such as ownership, capital and class. However, in my experience of the project as someone who struggled a lot with the WIKI Markup, I found there was the Reading Room (which I used when all my posts kept seemingly disappearing [my error for inputting URLs]) and class-mates as ‘strong support for creating and sharing,’ and ‘informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to the novices.’

Our group could not meet up face to face due to illness, conflicting schedules and other personal matters; however, I kept in touch with one person from my team. My first blog post had similar content to another person’s which I had only realised after posting. I reached out to my class-mate through the message boards and they responded that while our content was similar we had approached the issues from two different angles so we agreed to put a link on one another’s as a sense of continuity for the viewer.

I took two remaining subjects left in my team’s chosen chapter of Surveillance and Sousveillance but ensured that I made my intentions clear on the relevant message board in case they were already being covered. I had noticed that someone had posted something vague on a section which I wanted to expand upon. I reached out twice to ask if the person needed help but to no avail. I was unaware of the proto-call so I prepared a post and decided if nothing had been posted by 4:59 pm on the deadline day, I would post, which I did.

HayleyJo87 (discuss • contribs) 06:08, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Marker’s Feedback on Wikibook Project Work
Some very significant contributions to the chapter's content, which made a very big difference to the quality and feel of the chapter as a whole. The edits you make are substantial, well written and researched, and your formatting and referencing is good, generally. All materials seem to be drawing from solid reliable scholarship, rather than relying solely on wiki – although where this is relevant, you include interwiki links. Had you used the time available (i.e. the whole of the 3 weeks or so project period and not just the last days) this work could have been extended, considerably.

Wiki Exercises


 * 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.

Content (weighted 20%)

 * Your contribution to the book page gives a good brief overview of the subject under discussion in your chosen themed chapter. There is a good range of concepts associated with your subject, and the effort to deliver critical definitions, drawing from relevant literature and scholarship, and your own critical voice in the building of a robust argument is very much in evidence. The primary and secondary sources you found about the chapter’s themes cover a good range and depth of subject matter.

Understanding (weighted 30%)

 * Reading and research:
 * evidence of critical engagement with set materials, although some ideas and procedures more securely grasped than others
 * evidence of independent reading of somewhat circumscribed range of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material
 * Argument and analysis:
 * well-articulated and well-supported argument featuring variable depth of understanding
 * satisfactory level of evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position in discussion);
 * satisfactory level 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 variable independent critical ability

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) 15:05, 3 May 2016 (UTC)