Ana

Reflection and Analysis

The involvement in wikispaces was really a great experience in terms of group collaboration and the innovative form of communication and research. It was a different way in which students in the class could collaborate together and provide useful information. It was also amazing to see how the actual wiki works and gave us an opportunity to be involved in an online society, fusing our ideas together in the achievement of scholarly contribution.

I decided to explore a unique topic, ethics and technology, an area that wasn’t considered yet, but one that is extremely important in our ever so changing society. While doing research on the topic of ethical implications regarding new technologies I came across the issues of cochlear implants, which was really interesting for me as it involved not only the technological aspects of our program but also the communication aspects. Since CCIT focuses on communication in all its forms, I was intrigued to find a technology that would change the way an entire culture, the deaf community, would communicate.

I then decided to look deeper into my topic and add a piece on human cloning and stem cell research. Both topics have been receiving a lot of attention lately and I believe that it was important to inform others of these issues. It was amazing at how quickly other students decided to revise my work and how in the end it really turned out to be a collaborative effort. I added information to the cyberpunk page, the digital photography page, the film page, and the piracy page. Most of the community maintenance I contributed in was adding information to others pages, such as music piracy, and correcting spelling and grammar mistakes, and adding links and interesting websites and facts.

It was great to write in this context as information evolved greatly because of the contributions of others. It was amazing to see how a huge group of students were able to cooperate together to make such a useful resource. I enjoyed the constructive changes that were made to my own page as I believed that the work was made that much better, and it demonstrated what it was like to be in an information driven society, that allows for people to really be interconnected.

For future CCIT students I think it would be a good idea for the instructor to set up more guidelines for exactly how much content is required because the point of the assignment shouldn’t be how many edits someone made, but the quality of the contribution. I also found that students really would be at a disadvantage if they did not start the assignment ahead of time as the more time went on, the less contribution seemed to be needed and the less contribution could be made on your own page. Also future CCIT students should make sure that their work comes with proper references and credible sources as this should be an assignment that focuses on quality contribution not so much extensive editing. I think a misconception for the assignment is that the more editing one person does, or the more useless information added the better, but in reality posting tons of information that really has no purpose does not aid in the scholarly collaboration the course is trying to evoke. This was a great project for a digital communications course, as we actually got to experience what it is like to be a part of the innovations we enjoy today.