Analysis+and+Reflection+Jiang

=****Contribution:****=

Wikispace is a great tool which allows anyone who has access to it to share ideas and knowledge. In general, this project was an enjoyable learning experience for me. When I first logged onto Wiki, I saw that everyone was posting review notes and course material for test one. I tried to add content but all the topics that I was interested in were already posted. In the past two weeks, I did not have enough time to commit to the project. Suddenly, I realized that many topics related to the course material were already taken and it was quite difficult to add relevant information. So I decided to construct a topic on Internet safety. I found this topic quite interesting because it could affect every one of us. In order to take advantage of the Internet, we must understand how to avoid its negative aspects. I spent a lot of time adding content to my own page and modify it to make it look more professional. Then I spent time reading through almost every single page that my classmates had posted, added some sentences and images and made some small changes. I also submitted several entries under the news section. In addition, I corrected many grammar errors, added some images to improve the overall appearance of Wikispace.

=****Reflection:****=

This was a great collaborative project and it definitely enhanced my learning experience. I was surprised to see the great amount of information added by students to the Wikispace. I think it helped a lot of people on test one as well as everyone who participated in maintaining the space. I really liked the way of everyone working together to share knowledge. I learned a lot through the process of doing research, adding interesting topics, contributing thoughts and share ideas. I also noticed that as soon as a new page was posted, a large amount of information would be added by others. It seemed that we all put tremendous effort into building the database. In addition, I noticed that we all followed the proper guidelines, which again proved the idea of Panopticism.

=****Suggestions:****=

My suggestion to future CCIT students is that they should take full advantage of this useful tool, use it for other courses and group projects. I have created a Wikispace for my student club and I am trying to get all of our members involved. I believe the improved version of Wikispace will eventually take over WebCT. Another suggestion is that they should start as early as possible because if you wait till the last minute, you will have difficulty finding a topic and adding relevant content. Moreover, starting early allows others to add content to your own entry which in turn helps to improve your work. I also suggest more functions to be added to Wikispace, such as user’s ability to change text font, edit html code, change background image and adding multimedia files, this would make Wiki a lot more attractive. Finally, I suggest that we should no simply copy and paste online news articles and pictures onto a single page. This consumes a lot of resource and slows down the loading speed. However, we could summarize the article or post a link to the article. In summary, building Wikispace was a great experience and I suggest Mr. Jones not to close it until the end of the semester, so we can continue to take advantage throughout the duration of the course.