User talk:Yasi.sdt

I am Yasamin Saadat. I have created this account for a class project. Yasi.sdt (discuss • contribs) 13:45, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Social media
Social media is a place where you’re free to express your ideas and feelings. A platform where people are given the freedom to definite themselves and have a voice. it’s much easier to portray your thoughts and emotions through a screen. When a heart-breaking event occurs that affects you or the people surrounding you, you take to social media to tell your followers how you’ve been hurt, or how this event has affected you, sometimes in real life, it’s hard to display your true emotions and once you’ve said something you can never take it back or erase it, but social media gives you a chance to edit and delete.

Digital media gives you a chance at expressing yourself in a way that maybe is harder to do in real life. It lets you be someone you’re not, or someone you hope to be, you’re allowed to be different to real life and post or retweet about things that interest you which based on this attracts an audience that is also interested in the same things.

Different social media platforms are used for different reasons, using my own social media pages as a case, if you take a look at my Instagram page, you’ll mostly find images of places I call home, sometimes the meaning behind the photos is pure homesickness because I tend to share them when I’m away from home. On Instagram, I don’t post much about myself or what I’m feeling because the aesthetic of it isn’t suited that way. It’s usually what looks better visually. But if you take a look at my twitter, you’ll mostly see tweets and retweets about things that upset me or make me want to speak up about what I’m passionate about. Both people behind these accounts are me, yet on one I feel more comfortable to speak up about what I believe in whereas on the other and in real life I tend to stay quiet. Social media brings out parts in us we didn’t know existed until were given an audience and a voice.

Youth, Identity, and Digital Media
In the book by David Buckingham (2007) called “Youth, Identity, and Digital Media” he discusses how being raised around technology may affect a young person’s individuality and the development of social identities. The earth is flooded with digital media, but his question is whether it ‘affects people sense of self and others?’ He mentions the concerns of social media for the younger generation and their presentation of social identity.

David Buckingham writes “Much of the debate around identity derives from the tensions between these two aspects. I may struggle to “be myself” or to “find my true self,” and there are many would-be experts and authorities who claim to be able to help me to do this. Yet I also seek multiple identifications with others, on the basis of social, cultural, and biological characteristics, as well as shared values, personal histories, and interests.” The book goes on to explore how young individuals use social media creatively and how different genres of social media has emerged, through history starting from ‘SMS and instant messaging to home pages, blogs, and social networking sites.

Hi! I really agree with your point where you talk about how people can edit and delete what they post online in a way they can't in real life. Being able to hide and fix things you've done online like this, even in just the short term, is definitely something I agree is an important part of how social media lets you present yourself how you want. I enjoyed reading your examples where you show different parts of who you are depending on what social media you're using, and think that they were really convincing ways of proving your point about how you present yourself online. Your analysis of David Buckingham's book is also interesting, and definitely helped convince me of your points about how digital media affects your sense of self. Brightredactually (discuss • contribs) 11:59, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #4: Collaborative Essay Critical Evaluation – What ARE Wikis?


In this assessment, I will be discussing Wikibooks and how it is a platform of resource for others in similar interest.

In the main page of Wikibooks Unknown, (2016). Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks? ., it describes itself as “Wikibooks is a collection of open-content textbooks.” It goes on to mention that it is mainly used for textbooks, annotated texts, instructional guides, and manuals”. Wikibooks approaches a more ‘collaborative’ platform where it allows others to discuss ideas and facts and brings them together in writing about their specific topic. It leaves room for discussion to help the individuals in collaborating on this topic regardless of where they are.

Wikibooks has created in a way that it shows off how much an individual has contributed to the topic, usually, it lets others know in your list of contributions even If it is as small as one character or even if you’ve made the smallest change in deleting parts of your essay. This helps with the community knowing who has made the changes if needed to contact them about something they have written.

The Wikibooks project helped me greatly in understanding collaborative research. It allows groups and team members, who have never met face to face, to be able to communicate in the discussions page and plan out the plan without the need to see each other physically. Everyone is given the chance to discuss anything they wish about the topic and pushed everyone in the group to join into the discussion to work on the final piece. In our case, even though we had the least team members, we found it easy splitting the task between our group and the other group, who we had never spoken to before showing that collaborative research doesn’t need to be done in person.



The uniqueness of Wikibooks is that anyone from a different community or background could join into a collaborative essay as long as they have a similar interest in the book they are helping to write. It leaves no room for judgment. Individuality is welcome as people have different thoughts and sources that they link into the research with different writing style and choices. It gives everyone a chance to be heard in their field, without a sense of judgment because you never know who could be behind that username. It brings people together in writing for the same research topic. Alongside the wiki community who is also involved in wanting to inform and educate others. Wikibooks works against the thought of online emancipation. It focuses on peoples interactions together to create a book rather than working by themselves away from others.

Response to Wiki Exercise 4

I found your piece to be quite insightful in describing Wikibooks and its uses. Personally, I had never used the platform before our project, mainly because I thought it could not be used as a reliable resource for research much like its sister platforms; from your description of it, and from our work on the collaborative essay, I now realize that it can help greatly in finding additional sources.

I also agree with your comment on how the platform allows for collaborative work thanks to the discussion pages. The group I was in for the essay did a good job in using those pages to actively communicate and update every user on the progress of their research. Similar to how Wikibooks itself works, one of the contributors in our group created a section in which we could all make note of our sources and write a short annotated bibliography, so that everyone could find something they could need or simply an element for additional research. Additionally, I think that the fact that all of our contributions are shown (and in our case they were also graded for our project) helped ensure that we all took active part in the project, as well as keeping us accountable for all the changes we were making to the main page.

As for the project itself, I share your idea that it helped in understanding the importance of group work and how a platform such as Wikibooks can foster collaboration to a greater extent. As someone who does not live close to campus, I was grateful for the discussion pages for ensuring communication without the need to meet face to face. Even though it was not always easy (and sometimes even a little frustrating) to collaborate with such a large group of people, I enjoyed the fact that each person could contribute in their own way, and possibly lend a hand to those who were not as confident about their contributions.

I am currently reading a book called ‘You Are Not A Gadget’ by Jaron Lanier and it mentions Wikipedia and its sisters platforms; the author is not exactly a fan of the platform as he describes it as only being a useful source for ‘pop culture and hard science’. He also condemns users for engaging in ‘edit wars’, in which people who are passionate about a certain topic constantly edit its page to prove that they hold a more extensive knowledge than fellow contributors. On top of that, he describes it as a lazy way to find information, as users could read directly from the sources used on the platforms instead of relying on Wikipedia pages. Honestly, I do not fully agree with his thoughts, as I believe such platforms often simplify concepts as well as offering multiple translations. I also believe it helps in fostering a community of people with the same interests or aims, as our project has proved. Chiarabpapo (discuss • contribs) 12:28, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK: ENGAGEMENT ON DISCUSSION PAGES & CONTRIBS
Grade descriptors for Engagement: Engagement on discussion pages, and contribs of this standard attain the following grade descriptor. Whereas not all of the elements here will be directly relevant to your particular response to the brief, this descriptor will give you a clearer idea of how the grade you have been given relates to the standards and quality expected of work at this level:
 * Poor. Among other things, poor contributions 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.

As instructed in the labs, and outlined in the assessment brief documentation, students should be engaging at least once a day, for the duration of the project. The following points illustrate how this engagement is evaluated.

Evidence from contribs to both editing and discussion of content (i.e. volume and breadth of editorial activity as evidenced through ‘contribs’). These are primarily considered for quality rather than quantity, but as a broad guideline:
 * Each item on a contribs list that are 3000+ characters are deemed “considerable”
 * Each item on a contribs list that are 2000+ characters are deemed “significant”
 * Each item on a contribs list that are 1000+ characters are deemed “substantial”
 * Items on a contribs list that are <1000 characters are important, and are considered in the round when evaluating contribs as a whole because of their aggregate value

Overall:
 * Directly contrary to advice given in labs, lecture and podcast material, you chose to leave all contributions (to both the essay page, and the discussion page) to the final couple of days of the project period. Therefore, you didn’t leave anywhere near enough time for others to benefit from your contribs, and for you to engage with others meaningfully. Hence, you scraped a pass based on the quality of your one contrib classed as “significant”.

Engagement with and learning from the community on Discussion Pages
 * Evidence of peer-assisted learning and collaboration
 * Very Poor
 * Evidence of reading, sharing, and application of research to the essay
 * Poor
 * Evidence of peer-review of others’ work
 * Poor

Reflexive, creative and well-managed use of Discussion Pages
 * Clear delegation of tasks
 * Very Poor
 * Clearly labelled sections and subsections
 * Satisfactory
 * Contributions are all signed
 * Satisfactory

Civility. Your conduct is a key component of any collaboration, especially in the context of an online knowledge-building community. Please respect others, as well as observe the rules for civility on wiki projects. All contribs are moderated.
 * Too little evidence to make a judgement

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 15:32, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Instructor Feedback on Wiki Exercise Portfolio
Posts and comments on other people’s work, of this standard, roughly correspond to the following grade descriptor. Depending on where your actual mark is in relation to the making criteria as outlined in the relevant documentation, it should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band overall:


 * Good. Among other things, good entries will make a clear point in a clear way. They will relate concepts to original examples in a straightforward fashion. They will make effective use of the possibilities of the form (including links, as well as perhaps copyright-free videos and images, linked to from Wiki Commons). They may also demonstrate a broader understanding of the module's themes and concerns, and are likely to show evidence of reading and thinking about the subject material. The wiki markup formatting will be very clear.


 * This work is at the lower end of this grade band, so there’s clearly room for improvement here. One of those areas is that you ought to be more analytical in your approach to subject matter, and a little less descriptive. 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 criteria in the module handbook to get more of an idea of how to hit those targets.


 * Throughout your portfolio, you make fairly good use of the wiki formatting. Making more use of the wiki functionality and markup would have gone a long way to improving fluidity and functionality of posts. I suspect that, if you become more familiar and proficient with the platform, that this would make a difference.


 * Re: responses to other people’s posts – these are fairly good, if a little perfunctory. Remember that the comments are "worth" as much as posts themselves. The reason for this is not only to help encourage discussion (a key element of wiki collaboration!) but also to get you to reflect upon your own work. This can all, of course be used to fuel ideas that might form part of your project work.

General:
 * Reading and research: evidence of critical engagement with set materials; evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material – all quite good.


 * Argument and analysis: well-articulated and well-supported argument; evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position); evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections); evidence of independent critical ability – all good, although as previously said, I would try to be more analytical rather than merely descriptive, in future.


 * Presentation: good use of wiki markup and organisational skills.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 16:32, 1 May 2019 (UTC)