Analysis+and+Reflection+of+Candice+Jay

Wiki Assignment Contributions
Prior to my Wikispaces Research and Development Lab Project 1 contributions, I helped complete the Test 1 Notes page by adding in chapter summaries of Chapter 1 and Chapter 11. A minor edit was made to the Wiki Assignment FAQs.

__February 16, 2006__ __February 17, 2006__ __February 18, 2006__ __February 19, 2006__ __February 22, 2006__ __February 24, 2006 __ __February 25, 2006__ __February 26, 2006__
 * Added my Topic (Wearable Computers(1)) to the Table of Contents page.
 * Made the Wearable Computers page and linked it from the Table of Contents page.
 * Added myself to the Aliases and Analysis and Reflection page.
 * Edited the Analysis and Reflection page’s layout.
 * Edits to my page: Wearable Computers - writing and linking another page (ubiquitous computing) to it.
 * Edits to the Table of Contents page – made the layout more presentable.
 * Edits to my page: Wearable Computes.
 * Inputted information on Guest Lecturers on the Journal Assignment page.
 * Edits to my page: Wearable Computers.
 * Edits on the Spaces.Menu navigation bar – I fixed the layout and some wording of the links to make the navigation bar more presentable and fitting (ie. not running lower than the length of the shortest default page length beside it.
 * Edits to the Analysis and Reflection of Candice Jay.
 * Edits to my page: Wearable Computers - linked another wearable computer page to it (SMCR model of wearable computers)
 * Edits to my page: Wearable Computers - linked adaptive technologies within the page.
 * Added/Contributed to the Podcasting page.
 * Added/Contributed to the Corporate Blogging Strategies page.
 * Added 'Back to Table of Contents' link at the bottom of each Wiki page I edited.
 * Edits to the Surveillance page – spelling, formatting, table of contents.
 * Added the page Cyborg as a link from Wearable Computers (1)
 * Added/Contributed to the Accessibility page.

My reflections and observations on collaborative writing
The idea of collaborative writing is very good and helpful in the role of a learning community, but only if people have their information on the learning community website early enough before the due date for people to read through and make their edits.

Our 205 Wikispace ended up to be an excellent website for the idea of a learning community, but the notion of the students doing collaborative writing became a secondary idea. I think if our 205 Wiki Assignment was not an assignment and was up for the students for a longer period of time, it would be more successful in the collaborative writing field. However, I understand that this assignment is marked and that there needs to be a time span of which the students work on it. It is hard to get everyone to input their information within an earlier date before the assignment is due unless the earlier date is a deadline for the information to be marked. Maybe next year, try to make a deadline for the student’s main Wiki page to be up and a deadline for the students to do their edits to other pages. The editing of the Wiki website can still be an ongoing process. I found that a good idea and the 205 Wiki page became better and better as the days passed. What would be a neat idea is for the Professor/TAs of the course to give the whole 205 Wikispace a class mark to see how the students did as a collaborative whole. That idea only works if everyone has the will to contribute and not just a couple people doing most of the work.

I found that there were a couple of people who worked harder on our 205 Wikispace than others, and I know that is true of any collaborative work, but it would be nice to have a more even amount of effort put in by everyone. However, it was good that we can see how many page edits each person made to compare where you are at with everyone else.

I didn’t like how the time of your post was not the real time. For example, what would come up as Monday, 2: 15 pm would really be Monday, 5:15 pm. The unparallel time is a minor glitch and I’m sure can be fixed, unless it is a problem with Wikispaces itself.

The best collaborative outcome in our 205 Wikispace was that everyone's strengths were contributed to make the Wikispace look it's best. For example, I'm very conscious of the appearance of layouts, too much space or not enough space or if a layout is awkward, that bothers me. So I always end up fixing that part of the page because it bothers me so much. I'm sure things that I miss will be corrected by other people who notice those aspects the most and so on. As things get corrected to best of different people's abilities, the Wikispace only looks better. The same goes for writing - the content and the layout.

There's also the issue of people working on the same topic, but not collaboratively including it into an existing Wiki page, rather making a new Wiki page and naming it "topic" 2. That's not exactly collaborative writing.

Suggestions for future WIKI users
As a first user of a Wikispace, I found the concept of a Wikispace hard to grasp and was quite confused of what I had to do for this assignment. The example and parallel of [|Wikipedia] helped a little bit, but it wasn’t until I started editing the page, saw what other did, and tried things out on the Wikispace myself, that I started to understand what we had to do for the assignment.


 * What I found difficult**
 * Transferring writing from Word to Wikispaces.
 * Bullets on Wikispaces were hard to use.
 * You can’t undo edits when you are in the process, you need to cancel the edit page and start the editing process again.
 * To distinguish pages on the Table of Contents, if they were from the Test material (Key words) or from our Wiki Assignment.
 * To keep a page how I want it to be, especially if it is a page like the table of contents or navigation side bar, where everyone is extremely accessible to it and changes it to their liking.
 * I couldn't/didn't know how to justify (right or center) my writing or images.


 * What I found helpful**
 * The shortcut icons in the Wikispace Edits pages (linking webpages - internal and external), formatting the page, tables, images, horizontal rule. Shortcuts that eliminate HTML where I wouldn't know how to code otherwise.

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