User talk:MrRobot 321

this is the user talk page for MrRobot321 MrRobot 321 (discuss • contribs) 12:55, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Education Project 1
The political establishment in the United States of America had been shaken up with the rise in popularity of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Running for the republican and democratic nomination respectively, the two men have strikingly different policy positions (see: http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/compare/35-70/Bernie-Sanders-vs-Donald-Trump. ) and despite both being born in Brooklyn, NYC, have very different personal backgrounds too. I am interested into why they are regularly compared in the press. Possible explanations include but are not limited to; their anti-establishment rhetoric, their 'populist' policies, their shared hometown and their age ( both are the eldest candidates running for the respective party's nomination.) This comparison is not welcomed by either candidate as both have openly criticised one another. To see Sanders as the 'democrat's Trump' is damaging to Sanders' campaign due to Trump's unpopularity among democratic voters. It is also dismissive of their political backgrounds. Sanders is a mayor turned congressman turned senator. Trump is a business man turned reality tv star. Sanders has over 40 years of political experience whereas Trump has none. These comparisons in the press can be viewed as legitimising Donald Trump as a genuine presidential candidate as Bernie Sanders is an accomplished politician in his own right. I believe Bernie Sanders to be the best candidate for president and Donald Trump, the worst. Sanders' is a self described 'democratic socialist', an ideology that I feel closely aligned to myself. Trump's policies and rhetoric are indicative of a far right ideology. This is why the press' obsession with comparing the two as simlair is disappointing. MrRobot 321 (discuss • contribs) 13:51, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise 1: Formative Feedback
Your comparison of Trump and Sanders is slightly off topic for the first assignment, but nonetheless is clear and generally well written (don't forget to spell check your work). The discussion could benefit from a little more critical reflection and linking back to the module's topic, with integration of the literature where appropriate. It's also useful to use links when talking about concepts such as "democratic socialist", so that interested readers can immediately go to relevant resources.

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) 10:14, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

educational project 2 - visibility and online footprint
Until recently I didnt give my 'online footprint' much consiideration, but the news has been dominated with stories of new privacy laws, and mass infomration gathering without explicit consent. For example Edward Snowden brought to light the snooping capabilities of the NSA. It is difficult not to be at least slightly concerened about how much information on you is out there. Like most people in the uk I have a facebook account, and like most people in the uk I have told myslef that I am going to get rid of it. I once deactivated my facebook but because it was linked to my spotify account I was unable to acess spotify. I hurridly got facebook back. As well as facebook I have snapchat, tinder, twitter and whatsapp. I also have accounts in stremaing services such as netflix and amazon prime. Individually, these sites being aware of the information I put on them doesnt overly concern me. But I am worried that all this information could be put together and used to create a profile for me, accessable at the click of the button. Through the sites it would be possible for someone to determine my name, age, where i live, my intrests, friends, family, viewing and listening habits. They would also be able to know exactly what i look like, even from an early age with photos of me up on facebook from when i was a child. I dont use any specific privacy settings on my social media accounts. Most of the information on the sites I put there is of my own accord. Facebook requires you to use your own name but it is not neccessary to put up any pictures or any other personal information. You could always make your account accessable only to friends, i.e make use of privacy settings. This would stop people who you havent given explicit consent to viewing your page from doing so. But for some, including me, the worry is more that the company itself, in this instance 'facebook', is using your information in ways you are unhappy with. Possibly to sell products to you. The internet can be a pretty scary place because it is essentially invisible, and it is perhaps because of this detatchment from reality, this invisible entity, that we allow ourselves to be so visible and essentially naked ( sometimes literally) on it. MrRobot 321 (discuss • contribs) 11:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Comments

Education project 3 - Information Overload
The sheer volume of information available on the World Wide Web is sometimes incomprehensible. There are at least 4.82 billion pages as of Tuesday, 01 March, 2016, the time of writing (http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/). It’s easy to become distracted, for example, Wikipedia surfing. The same logic applies to visual media as well with YouTube and its 'related videos' section appearing after you have watched your intended video. It’s as though the World Wide Web is acting out its name, trapping us in its web of information. This post deals with my attempts to limit the negative effects of 'information overload'.

The concept of 'always on' is discussed by prominent theorist Dannah Boyd; “I may not be always-on the Internet as we think of it colloquially, but I am always connected to the network. And that's what it means to be always-on.” Even when we are not on our phone or otherwise internet connecting device, it is rarely out of site or mind. We are still easily accessible to others. I agree with Boyd and come to interpret her work as promoting physical breaks from technology. This is what I practice. I take breaks, often many hours or even rarely, an entire day whereby I place my phone in a physically separate place to myself. I find having the phone on my being, i.e. in my pocket, too much of a temptation. As a generation we tend to fill any lull, even if it may just be a few seconds, with information gathering via our personal technology i.e. looking at our smartphones. In the past I have made attempts to limit my social media usage by not having the apps on my phone therefore limiting my usage to my laptop which I would only use at home. This attempt failed within a week as the temptation was too much and I got the apps back.

Then there is the question of why I take what seems, such drastic measures to separate myself form my technology. Surely indulging myself in information would improve my knowledge? Isn’t this is a good thing? There are issues with this argument. Firstly, the quality of the information which we access is very questionable. The UK's top 25 most popular sites ( http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/GB) shows that we access a lot of low quality information sites such as social media websites or 'Theladbible'. Personally, I very rarely access academia or what I would consider high quality information when using the internet out with university projects. Secondly, there is the question of why we access all this information. For many it's simple boredom. We don't absorb the information very well. Citing a University College London study, Brooke Campbell, in her article http://www.elcomcms.com/en-au/Resources/Elcom-Blog/Posts/technology-and-its-influence-on-how-we-absorb-information explains that reading online differs to reading printed book. "The research found that many of the people that they studied skipped between information sources quickly, skimming as they went and rarely revisiting a site for reference, though occasionally saving a longer article." Then there is the very real issue of internet and smartphone addiction classified as negatively affecting ones mental health. An Online help guide for smartphone addiction is accessible here. http://www.helpguide.org/articles/addiction/smartphone-and-internet-addiction.htm We have to understand that information gathering is generally advantageous to us but that the internet is crammed full of spam and low quality information. Sometimes it sucks us in and effectively wastes our time, our lives. I would advise real physical breaks from the online community. MrRobot 321 (discuss • contribs) 11:27, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Comments
Hi @MrRobot321, your article really connected with me, especially your point that we don’t tend to look at “high quality information” besides work. I find this to be very true, and I almost always default to social media when I take breaks from work to view the lower quality information. I think its worth noting however that we – as a culture – are fairly aware of this being low quality information, and know not to overly rely on any important information from sites such as ‘TheLadBible’.

Similarly to yourself I also try break myself away from personal technology, especially when working on an important assignment, however I don’t think we can ever totally ignore devices such as our phones, as we are aware there might be an emergency of some sort.

Overall I think your piece is very well cited and links to things like the smartphone addiction page could help many people I’m sure.

P.S. there’s a useful way to reference things on Wikibooks, if you go to my Exercise 3 on my discussion page and edit it, you’ll be able to see how to do it, makes it all a lot tidier than links in the text. CwazyChris (discuss • contribs) 17:09, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I like your point that we as a collective don't tend to access "high quality" information in our daily lives; that hadn't occurred to me until now and gives a whole new perspective on the information we are exposed to. I also relate to you when it comes to deleting apps from your phone in an attempt to kick the temptation and it being unsuccessful - in my case I ended up just using my mobile's internet browser to access the sites I'd deleted. It's interesting to see how many studies on modern concepts such as Internet and smartphone addiction have already arisen and exactly how widespread such addictions have become. The sources you linked are an interesting read and the site for mobile addiction will be helpful for me in particular! CalSmith96 (discuss • contribs) 18:17, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Excellent work on the article! I found the web size site very cool (it's up to 4.84 billion now). Such incredible size, and yet seeing what it is mainly used for is ridiculous and funny in a sort of sad way. Boyd points out what is almost always on our mind and in our eyes- the web is everywhere. Good on you for trying to practice self-control by separating from it, though it may be very difficult. I have pursued a few different ways of doing that myself. Have you discovered any that have worked for you long-term? The article itself was well written and it looks like you made a lot of progress since the first assignment. Good references too. I appreciated the honesty and enjoyed reading. Stafoya (discuss • contribs) 11:57, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Good writing on your article bud, interesting stuff in there, I especially agree when you state "We have to understand that information gathering is generally advantageous to us". For me this is the defining point, as I feel it is obviously better to have more info available, but that the key aspect here is how we filter this information and data, because as you said, there is so much spam and junk out there. A nice short read, well done. TheDoctor1888 (discuss • contribs) 11:47, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #4 - Wikibook Project Reflective account
I was part of the 14 person team that worked on the 'An Internet of Everything', section, 'open source and proprietary technologies'. Our group was the smallest by a margin of at least seven people. I discovered this before work on the project began, so became instantly aware that our finished Wikibook would likely not be as extensive as others.

As the smaller group of five, we had our own Facebook chat, but this was not truly used during the project. Indeed, we did not meet up once. Had this been a larger group, this decision may have been regrettable but for the most part, working as a larger team of nine, this actually made collaboration online easier. We weren’t falling over one other for certain topics and people were able to contribute and know that there comment wouldn’t be “missed” unlike in other groups where the sheer traffic of discussion would have resulted in some forgotten contributions. Because five people didn’t contribute till late on there was, certainly on my end, apprehension that the workload we had set out for ourselves would be too much. When the five contributors did join however, there wasn’t a sudden imbalance, or chaos, but rather everything stated to fall in to place.

There were some real collaborative successes within the project. The creation of a help page proved vitally important. A fellow group member created the section which I annotated to inform others that this could be used for general queries and should be checked often. I, myself, made use of the section when I asked for help late on with the addition of pictures, something I had long struggled with. A member was able to help me out and the finished product was a much more polished look. I was able to collaborate with another member on a topic that I later had to drop out of due to other time commitments. The collaboration was vital, and from the initial idea I had put forward, a more definitive, clear direction in which to dissect the section had evolved. Also, a few members of the group, including myself, had gone through the Wikibook, correcting spelling and grammatical errors as well as adding Wikipedia reference links. I was unable to complete this for the entire book unfortunately due to poor time management. As a second year university student, this is a skill that I, and many other members of my group, have as of yet, failed to master.

The notion of the ‘civic web’ and ‘web 2.0’ can be understand through the example of the Wikibook project. David Gauntlett explains web 2.0 in terms of, “any collective activity which is enabled by peoples passions”. This idea of “people’s passions” would seem to contradict the Wikibooks linkage to web 2.0 as we were assigned our topic, something that no doubt interested me as work continued, but by no means was a passion. It is however more the participatory nature of the project that links it with understandings of civic web and web 2.0. Coincidentally, it is found that use of open source technology (the topic upon which the project is based) is seen to improve civic engagement. We explored the reasoning for this in the book in detail. As Wikibooks is present in the public sphere, there is the opportunity for collaboration with those outside our set group as well as the opportunity to add and change information to our fellow members’ assigned sections. This never really occurred. While collaboration occurred in the discussion page, for the most part people stayed away from altering others sections for likely fear of being branded abrasive or disruptive. It was after all a university assignment, and not a socio-political engagement, as the civil web is normally understood (although not necessary), so would likely have no real world implications. Banaji and Buckingham have argued however that, all internet interactive features are essentially banal, not creative, and bring about no socio-political change. They focus on the concept of individualism and how it plaques civic web power. Simon Lindgren has put forward his own opinion of these types of theorists; “the grumpy sceptics, on their part, argue that ever present power structures of capitalism, exclusion, racism and misogyny will come out on top.”. I didn’t find this to be the case in regards to the wiki project. Absolutely no racism, no misogyny. Indeed, I had no idea with exception to a couple of my fellow members what race or gender they were. This is possibly an advantage of online mass collaboration whereby there isn’t the emphasis on the importance of these unfortunately sometimes defining features. With regards to exclusion, I made conscious efforts to include others by offering topics to them that were free. I believe all of Jenkins’ five point ‘defining participation’ understanding were met my group. One of the points in particular, “With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed on to novices”, can be seen very clearly in our discussions. We were all new to Wikibooks but some of us picked it up quicker than others, understanding the mark up and referencing, and pointed this information to others in the help section.

Two concepts I have now became familiar with, essential to understanding group work, are that of the “free rider” and the “sucker effect ” Due to the nature of the assignment, whereby we were marked individually I believe the free rider was eliminated. The sucker is “the student who is perceived by other members of the group to be the most capable, and is therefore left to carry the bulk of the workload.”. Again, I never felt that we had a ‘sucker’. At times, I felt like I was contributing too much and wasn’t giving others the chance to show their own abilities, but I never felt like I was the most capable and I certainly wasn’t left the most to do in the project. My section was by far not the most expansive.

Overall, the online Wikibook experience was an interesting one, both in terms of actual content and the process. It was also very stressful! I’ll take away a lot from this. Unfortunately one of the consequences of engaging to such an extent with Wikibooks is now how conscious I am of the process when I am reading a Wikipedia page in my spare time. I am now actively looking at the construction pages. MrRobot 321 (discuss • contribs) 10:55, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

References

Marker’s Feedback on Wikibook Project Work
You have clearly taken up the challenge of working in a wiki environment and tackled some of the module themes with a clear level of critical reflection that integrates independent and appropriate secondary reading throughout both the exercises and chapter contributions. There's fair evidence of collaboration and collegiality in both your contributions to the chapter discussion page.

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, clearly grounded on close familiarity with concepts and ideas encountered on the module
 * evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material through evidence of close familiarity with a wide range of evidence
 * Argument and analysis:
 * well-articulated and well-supported argument featuring appreciable depth of understanding
 * good level of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position in discussion);
 * good 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 appreciable 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) 14:48, 3 May 2016 (UTC)