User talk:TrishEl

This is my wikibooks user discussion page. I will be exploring Wikibooks as part of an educational assignment and register my experience on this page. Please feel free to leave your own comments to discuss. TrishEl (discuss • contribs) 14:15, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #1: Educational Assignment
During their pay-per-view events WWE features a short segment during the pre-show that they call “The Social Media Lounge”. At the start of the show the audience is provided with a hashtag for the event and encouraged to tweet their questions to one of the athletes that will come by to answer some of them. The pre-show is an hour long and is streamed live for free via YouTube for the entire world, making it accessible to you even if you haven’t paid for the actual event.

There’s most likely a very small number of people who would deny that social media has both its upsides and downsides. But focusing on the positives one thing is that it has made it a lot easier for people to not only stay in contact with family, but also get in contact with their favourite celebrity. There’s a fascination surrounding celebrities, and a curiosity among people to want to know things about them.

But at the same time this does not appear to be the reason behind the social media lounge that is used. The social media lounge is part of the show and there’ll be no more than three short questions asked that can put emphasis on the character that particular wrestler is supposed to show to the audience. It’s about keeping up appearances and it makes the effort of sending in questions more interesting. If people are aware that they will get a response from a character, is it really an answer that should quench the want to know things about them?

Perhaps it’s the entire point of it all, to get an answer delivered by the character and not know if it’s the persona seen on TV or the person behind them that the answer is really from. In this sense WWE has managed to use Twitter as a tool. They are aware of the fact that people will ask questions, and they can choose the ones specifically that can be used for a storytelling purpose. The concept of the feature as a storytelling device brings fans into the creative process; they’ll become a part of developing the events taking place on their screens.

TrishEl (discuss • contribs) 10:20, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Comments for Wiki Exercise #1: Educational Assignment
Here's a section where you can comment on my post for the first wiki exercise done on the FMSU9A4 module. TrishEl (discuss • contribs) 15:09, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

This raises a lot of good points about how social media blurs the lines between celebrities and their fans. Over the last few years social media, especially Twitter, and more traditional media such as television have become linked with the use of hashtags and trending topics. This is useful for all sorts of programmes, from sports to current affairs, as it allows the audience to connect and participate in real time. So ordinary people can become much more engaged and have their say on what interests them. However, people can use social media to selectively show the best parts of themselves – they can portray themselves as they wish, which may not always be factual.

AmyBevs (discuss • contribs) 11:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise 1: Formative Feedback
This reflection on WWE's "Social Media Lounge" offers some interesting thoughts on the role of social media and interaction with celebrities. These ideas are seedlings and need to be teased out further. For example, you ask whether engagement with celebrities on social media is superficial, which would benefit from further analysis and a concrete example of this phenomenon. Since you are using Wikibooks, it's also important to remember to include wiki markup and relevant links within your content as this will be an important part of what you are assessed on. Your responses are thoughtful and engage with colleagues' posts, but again would benefit from a greater critical engagement with the material, particularly in relation to module themes.

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) 10:53, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #2: Visibility and Online Footprint
If social media was created in order for people to stay in contact with friends and family, and build up a network of people online it would seem like it has succeeded. However the tricky part comes with analysing the use of different social media, does gender, age, social class, or which form of social media it is matter? A person’s presence on social media may change depending on whom they’re interacting with and on which platform. Because of this there is definitely a question of ingenuity when it comes to interactions online, it’s easier to filter your own appearance and show what you want which might now always be the entire truth, or even part of it.

One of the social medias that I use the most is Facebook. For someone who has been living in quite a few cities and countries over only the past 5 years Facebook is incredibly useful. I have been able to stay in contact with a lot of people I never would’ve spoken to again if it weren’t for the use of social media. But then on the other hand it doesn’t really count when you exchange birthday wishes and a couple of polite words every now and then, does it? But Facebook is the network most people use and there is an assumption that people do use it. To me it has become more of a source of information for University modules or societies than somewhere I interact with my friends and family.

Other than Facebook I use a few more types of social media: Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. My use of these three differs slightly from one another. I have a friend who’s more likely to send me a snapchat with whatever she would’ve texted me with a couple of years ago. This isn’t how I would interact with my parents, so it shows how interactions with different people online differ. On the other hand I feel like I use Twitter more as a source of information than to share things myself. My own contributions to the site are more of the occasional interaction with people or like.

I am available on social media almost all of the time and my visibility online is quite high. Even if I’m not by my computer looking at Facebook all the time I’m still online through my phone most of the time. At night I may remain logged in on social media accounts on my laptop but I turn off the Internet on my phone to take a way some of the distractions. It is in my control to choose to stay online or offline. But even though it is within my control what I post on social media, that data will always remain somewhere and never completely in my control.

Determining where the truthful representation of a person can be found is difficult, but I believe personally that the answer isn’t one specific form of social media. There’s nothing more truthful about the way someone acts on Facebook than on Snapchat, it’s just different sides of a person. Depending on the people someone interacts with behaviour changes, not only online but in real life as well.

TrishEl (discuss • contribs) 09:24, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Comments for Wiki Exercise #2: Visibility and Online Footprint
Here's a section where you can comment on my post for the second wiki exercise done on the FMSU9A4 module.TrishEl (discuss • contribs) 08:51, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I think you’re first point of how the variables of who, what, how etc. are important in social media is very true – certain platforms are used for specific things and for contacting different people. I think the Adrian Athique reading is appropriate here, within which Erving Goffman talked about people using different personalities to suit different social contexts. I think this happens a lot on social media, and a lot of the time you have to self-censor yourself to make sure you don’t post something that might badly skew someone’s thoughts on you.

I also think its interesting how Facebook is seen as almost an essential thing amongst the younger generations, and even older ones too. It is assumed everyone has Facebook, and if someone has a birthday, as you say, you feel obliged to post a birthday wish to them. I think this shows the evolution that has happened, where once you would’ve sent a birthday card, now we just put a short birthday message on social media. This also applies to your example of Snapchat – when once it would have been a simple text, now Snapchat is seen as a main way of talking to friends casually.

Your final point of how this is similar to real life in our adjustments to ourselves is also very true, that we will show a totally different side of ourselves when a certain person is nearby. Again I think that social media is just an example of old interactions being updated for the digital age in this sense. We cannot know everything about a person from social media, but nor can we from meeting a person in real life.

CwazyChris (discuss • contribs) 12:27, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

This is a view towards social media that I have never though of actually, even though it is blatantly obvious. Your point about a person's interaction with social media altering depending on who they are talking to is very interesting. I didn't realize that just as you would act differently in person depending on who you are interacting with, the same would apply on social media networks. I guess many people would confuse this with being a different person or 'two-faced' but as you mention nicely " There’s nothing more truthful about the way someone acts on Facebook than on Snapchat, it’s just different sides of a person." As you said, your friend who would usually SMS you in the past now sends you Snapchats instead. Do you think social media is allowing us to get away with personal contact, or is social media simply a way of life now? Perhaps, pictures do just speak more than words. What do you think TrishEl? This article really got me to further think about online visibility, well done. Purneet kainth (discuss • contribs) 08:25, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Introduction
The information available on the Internet can appear endless. It's something that's constantly being updated and it can make it very difficult to find what you're looking for. Information is constantly evolving as well, and one of the important things is to know what you're looking for and having a way of finding it. No matter what it is that you're looking for you need to find a way that suits you, and it might be a different way of going about it depending on what you're searching for but regardless I believe it's a very personal preference.

Everyday Information
This is the information that we get on a daily basis usually in a very casual context - it can be on social media, news sites, or by email for example. This is information that you may just scroll through briefly, perhaps engage with a couple of people on Facebook but most likely not everyone on your news feed. However when it comes to Facebook it is determined what information you'll be given as the site has a way of determining what you will see on your News Feed. When it comes to emails I can say without a doubt that there are newsletters I get from websites I've most likely never opened, I've just not been bothered to go into one of the emails to scroll down and unsubscribe. Somehow simply deleting the email seems like less of an effort.

Formal Information
Searching and finding information for a more formal use online is very different, for example you may be looking for information for an academic assignment and then you'll know what you need exactly. It becomes important to be aware of what it is you're looking for and what you want to use the information for, this will help you in figuring out how to search for it. My personal preference is to start with the library catalogue and work from there, after that I usually turn to Google to see if I can find something and I've found that using filters become quite useful then. It might be a bit more complicated sometimes to find what you need but it's fortunate that a lot of information is available to engage with and use through the Creative Commons license. This allows us to engage with information and contributes to making the Internet an open source for sharing information by following the terms and conditions of the license.

Conclusion
There is a huge amount of information available online and it can be rather intimidating to sort through. It is important to know what you want to achieve with the information or it's easy to get lost in something else entirely, so determining your purpose and what use the information is for is key. Once you've found a way to navigate then it gets a little easier to comprehend and deal with.

TrishEl (discuss • contribs) 01:16, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Comments for Wiki Exercise #3: Information Overload!
Here's a section where you can comment on my post for the third wiki exercise done on the FMSU9A4 module. TrishEl (discuss • contribs) 01:17, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

When you are discussing everyday information you talk about how Facebook determines what you see on your newsfeed. I find this interesting as I sometimes forget that Facebook ultimately has control over the information you are looking at, depending on the personal details that you have already given them. This ‘control’ actually seems quite scary – what information is Facebook hiding from you, and why? Recently it was announced that Twitter was going to have a similar ‘algorithm’ system of seeing tweets, much to the dismay of most users. I think that this kind of defeats the purpose of Twitter – if you have followed someone, then you are going to be interested in what they have to say. The chronological order of seeing tweets also makes sense – for example, when many different people are talking about the same event. These examples both demonstrate how the information available to us may not be completely under our own control.

AmyBevs (discuss • contribs) 12:54, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I find it interesting that you divided the information available online into everyday and formal. I'd agree there are many situations where such a distinction can be made—as you noted, academic assignments of the type we get on this course tend to require information from sites that are not used for anything but access to academic materials. But I don't think the categories are universal. For a lot of people information is not so easily divided into work and personal; journalists, for example, do some of their investigative work on Twitter nowadays, and there are many people whose jobs revolve entirely around social media and the information found there, like social media managers and YouTubers. So I don't think it's a case of dividing the kinds of information into those two categories; but what you said later, that it's "important to know what you want to achieve with the information or it's easy to get lost in something else entirely", I think that is true—regardless of what kind of information it is a user is accessing. So I'd suggest it's the browsing that's everyday or formal, rather than the information. --EmLouBrough (discuss • contribs) 23:21, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #4: Wikibook Project Reflective Account
Looking at the overall aspects of the Wikibooks project it ended up being quite different from what I expected. When we started the project I didn’t have a lot of expectations, but I did think I would find it to be more intense than I did. There was never a point in the project when I felt particularly stressed about it, and I think a lot of that had to do with the group I worked with. Throughout the time of the project we had regular contact on Facebook and that became our main point of contact where we would decide upon dates for meetings. Personally I feel as if it was a lot easier to communicate via Facebook rather than on the actually Wikibooks page We decided to recap our meetings on the discussions page to ensure that we all remembered what had been said and the key points we discussed were registered for our work on the chapter. Because of the fact that we did make sure to meet up it eliminated a lot of unnecessary stress that could have been an issue otherwise.

However, despite that I do feel as if I would personally do some things differently if I were to do a project like this again. I would make sure that I start participating in the discussion on the Talk page earlier and also more frequently. What I noticed was that it was a lot more difficult to communicate as a group in the larger groups that worked on the chapter formed by the small groups. It took very long until people started making their presence known on the Talk page and that created a bit of a struggle with organising the chapter and distributing sections between the groups from different seminars. Even though it did take us a bit longer than I would've preferred to become organised on our chapter Talk page I'm still happy with the way we managed to collaborate with each other. There were never any major issues that we had to deal with, not in the larger group or the smaller group.

Because at times there was a lack of communication between everyone who was working on our chapter in the Wikibook that did make it a bit more difficult. Collaboration and participation was a large part of this assignment and it felt as if you were depending on other people a little too much at times. It became difficult to do some sections because there was a lack of response from others; so trying to have a discussion was not always the easiest task. At times I found that I struggled to find time to make posts, Shirky (2010) argues that people find time to do things they want to do even when they don’t have it but I think I may not have prioritised the project at all times. He also explores the ideas of the World Wide Web has allowed for global resources to be shared and used differently. Shirky states that we need to be aware of how and where, and not just what actions new resources can be used for.

It did turn out that it is possible to use Wikibooks as a medium for open collaboration and exchanging ideas online. I think it was a really useful assignment, even though I may have not enjoyed all aspects of it, it has taught me to view Wikipedia and Wikibooks in a different way. TrishEl (discuss • contribs) 21:00, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Comments for Wiki Exercise #4: Wikibook Project Reflective Account
Here's a section where you can comment on my post for the fourth wiki exercise done on the FMSU9A4 module.TrishEl (discuss • contribs) 21:01, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

When I first started this module I also didn’t really know what to expect from the Wikibook project. It wasn’t until I got started that I really began to comprehend the task that we had to do. However, I also agree that it wasn’t as stressful as I thought it could be. With so many people working on each chapter, the workload was divided into manageable chunks for each group and person, allowing people to do their research without feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. A key point that you mention is that offline discussion was also necessary among the groups, despite this task being done mostly online. I believe that it is important initially to discuss your ideas and decisions face-to-face in order to build a relationship with the rest of your group, leading to more effective work and collaboration later on. The only problem with this is that it is harder to document these discussions online, and thus receive the credit for them. We got around this by mentioning our meetings on the talk page. I think that the most important thing that we have learned from this project is the importance of communication and collaboration with online projects. When some team members fail to contribute, this impacts the rest of the group. However, when everybody works well together the whole team reaps the benefits and is able to produce a useful resource.

AmyBevs (discuss • contribs) 23:14, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Marker’s Feedback on Wikibook Project Work
Your contributions reveal chunks of engagement, but these are primarily territory grabbing rather than true collaboration. In the wiki exercises, your engagement is better, as you are generous with your feedback to colleagues' posts. Your exercises get progressively better, although further integration with reading would further enhance them. Your discussion of McLuhan and technological determinism in the chapter demonstrates an adequate understanding of some of the module's meaty themes.

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 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) 14:56, 3 May 2016 (UTC)