Analysis+And+Reflection-dli

=Summary of Contributions=

Content
In the CCT205 Wikispaces, I established the following pages: To review the concept of Cyber-optimists, Cyber-skeptics and Cyber-pessimists, I created a page on this topic. I collected information from the textbook, researched from external resources, organized the information and expressed my own opinions. During this process, I viewed the related Wikispaces such as the digital divide, the global divide, the social divide and the democratic divide. I also learned that George Gilder was a Cyber-optimist so I added a page about him. I used Baidu as an example of eliminating digital divide so I added a page of it accordingly. Since Baidu used P4P as a key technology, I added a page of P4P. P4P was not directly related to the course content, instead, it was a branch from Baidu in order to provide some background information.
 * Baidu
 * Cyber-optimists, Cyber-skeptics and Cyber-pessimists
 * Gilder, George
 * P4P (Pay for Performance)

Community Maintenance

 * Added Wiki links and external links in multiple pages, e.g. in the page of Digital divide.
 * Added small sections, e.g. the Legal Concerns section in Online Fandom.
 * Organized the table of contents, e.g. relocated the index of Bill Gates from “B” to “G”.
 * Added external links according to the contents.
 * Corrected grammatical errors.
 * Corrected misleading links, e.g. a link named “Flash Download” in Macromedia Flash Guide actually led to download a flash player. I renamed the link to “Flash Player Download”.
 * Posted messages to indicate why I did this edit, or to notify some errors on the pages.
 * Provided feedback on Test One as well as the assignment.

=Reflections and Observations=

I started my work from editing other students’ pages. Thus I got an idea of how a good Wikipedia article looked like. Then I collected information and wrote my first page. When I came back on the second day for another edit, I found that some fellow students had already worked collaboratively on this topic. I enjoyed reading their opinions on my topic. Together, we enriched the content beyond a single person’s ability.

I also enjoyed surfing the Wikispaces and reading articles about every aspects of digital innovation. It saved me time to research. I did not need to pull the information; the information was pushed to me. I used the Wikispace as a study guide for Test One. I found some key terms from the textbook, others from the lecture notes. The information was scattered. On the other side, in the space named “Tests Notes & Questions”, all the key terms were listed by order, with Wiki links pointed to relevant articles. This feature made it easy for my reviewing process.

I found three tricks to attract more attention on one article. First, it must be closely related with the core of the Wikispace, i.e. digital innovation. Second, somebody must maintain it so that the content was up-to-date. People were more interested in active articles than dead articles. And they could also locate the active articles from “Recent Changes” category. Third, people can find a page easier if there were lots of links pointed to it. List the page under Table of Contents, establish internal links in relevant topics, and add it to “See also” sections were good practice to draw attention to where the links pointed to.

It did not require lots of technical skills to establish a Wikispace. However, a more powerful tool would make it even more convenient. For example, it made our life easier if a tool can add links of new pages to the Table of Contents automatically. Furthermore, a tool with a satisfactory check-in, check-out function would lead to less conflict. Imagine this process: person A checked out version 1 of Page X to edit, then person B checked out the same page, later B checked in his edit as version 2, lately A checked in his edit as version 3. With the current tool, B’s work was not saved because A checked in the final version which was based on version 1. I, like person A, encountered this situation. I reverted to person B’s version, and then I re-did my edit. Thus, all the changes were retained. However, this process was not straight forward. A better solution is introduce an exclusively check out mechanism.

=Suggestions=

My suggestion to future CCIT students: It was a great experience being able to work collaboratively. Once you start working on it, you will enjoy it. It was easier and more organized to retrieve information from Wikispaces than from WebCT or CCNet. I hope more courses will use Wikispaces.
 * Follow Wiki Netiquette, be ethical and respect other people’s work.
 * Append information that make sense, and delete wrong information with care.
 * Make your text easier to scan by using different font style, bullet form, shorter paragraphs, etc.
 * Mark your edits briefly so that the viewers do not have to click in your version to know what you did.
 * Start your work earlier so that people have more time to work on it collaboratively.


 * - Diwei Li #993996707**