Cashmore,+Chris


 * Analysis and reflections on use of Wikispaces**


 * Summary**

The earliest content which I have created on the class Wikispace was influenced by a guest speaker on surveillance. The particular monitoring of information transfer that I have added was through what is known as **//keystroke logging//** (or keylogging). I later continued to add more information on social attitudes due to culture and technology. These two concepts are located under **//public spheres//** and the more modern example of **//virtual spheres//**. The most recent content which I have included on the Wikispace was one of the oldest and most successful programs to incorporate P2P (peer to peer) information and communication transfer. This program still exists almost 20 years later; known as **//IRC//** (Internet Relay Chat). As well, I have also done community maintenance under **//gatekeepers//** and **//video game addiction//**.


 * Reflections**

When I had begun working on the Wikispace, I was not particularly interested in the idea for a project to begin. The reason for that was my first year at the University of Toronto I had participated in an on-line class (lectures were still in person though) which was not particularly well presented. In this class individuals never met their tutors, and weekly essays were to be handed in online, on a network that was commonly under construction or down. This class originally discouraged my when I had heard a large portion of our CCT 205 classes were to include large portions of file transfers and class work on-line. Although I had little faith, I had also never encountered Wikispaces in the past. After visiting early tutorials, I was soon introduced to the concepts and uses of these spaces. They proved to be easy to research, create and edit work on, and did so while influencing other individuals to share their backgrounds and knowledge to a global audience. It was amazing to observe over the period of the project, how quickly information was added and later developed in detail. By monitoring my early work, it was intriguing to witness the added information or relation to other similar concepts to the original. Furthermore, the Wikispace has been used as study guide for all the students, allowing them to access notes and resources which other students created previously. This allowed students to interact as a large study group, without worrying about their proximity.

While creating the Wikispace, I found that without the influence and aid within the tutorials I would have found it difficult and more tedious to do the work. From a perspective of never working with Wikispaces before, it may have been difficult to know where to begin the project. These encyclopedias provide a fast and interactive learning space, and require little previous knowledge or language skills to do so.