Tag Archives: Collaborative content

E-portfolio .. The Beginning

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Creating a perfecting my e-portfolio was a process, having OCD made me super detail oriented and I poured over making it just right. Though it will never be “done” I will say I am happy that it’s on an upward path. I have changed the theme half a dozen time moved and reorganized content and played with all the settings and widgets I could find. After toying around myself and getting rather frustrated because I kept wrecking the home page I went to seek some help, first in the Itech lab on the sixth floor and then with Professor Belli.

The tech lab had some helpful tips to making the pages easier to manage when you’re brand new to the site and he was also able to reset the menu bar which I managed to mangle. The lab is good for quick tips and fixes but as Professor Belli mentioned it’s probably better to seek out the open lab team for all the widgets and plug ins because for I for the life of me could not get the twitter plug in to work right.

Today I went and met with Professor Belli to discuss content revision and placement and she also tried to help with the elusive twitter widget, to no avail though so ill be visiting the open lab team. I also learned how to customize my menu bar and make functional categories so my content can be grouped similar to how our class page is. Learning a few tips and tricks were helpful but I want to learn more about open lab and the features of it so I am able to maximize its benefits.
(added 11/17)When creating my about me I aimed to highlight my background info, where I came from, the important things about myself and my academic and career goals and then finally my hobbies. I aimed to make my professional stance known but also give myself a human side. By adding hobbies it shows what I enjoy and what balances my work and school life out.

Overall I think it’s a good way to keep track of your work and what potential employers may want to see or be looking for. I will add that i got my content to be featured on my twitter so thats pretty cool and i’m hoping it will gain some exposure. I think it would be helpful though if categories came pre populated and we were able to rename and use them so we don’t have to muck through so many different settings to get them to work. Meaning similar to how the pages come set up the categories should too. AND like i’ve said since practically day one I would love it if this site had its open app or at least was able to be signed into via the word press app. Being able to move and view content mobile would be huge! I plan on adding content both for classes as well as my own preference to showcase the best abilities i have both academically and personally and i’m hopeful that in conjunction with my twitter project that I will be able to share my content more freely.

Response Blog #3 – Wikipedia

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Wikipedia seems like it’s been around for ever but in fact, it has only been around since 2001.  As an example of collaboration, Wikipedia is perfect.  It functions as an encyclopaedia with content provided and is edited by countless people.  You can basically find any topic and it supersedes any classical book we have today.  The concept of Wikipedia is that if the information is wrong, then someone will correct it and eventually it will reach a level of accuracy.  Even though there is oversight and governing rules, you can literally post without looking at them.  And why is this a problem? It’s a problem because people or organizations with personal agendas, not committed to the truth, can easily corrupt and influence others who are naive to the facts.  To be fair, companies and other organizations also use Wikipedia to update content in a number of technical and scientific fields and their knowledge is unquestionable, but its weaknesses is that anyone can add or edit the content of a listing and that allows for errors.

However, if I am to evaluate Wikipedia, I would say it needs to be critically viewed and used.  Although I have never posted on Wikipedia, I use it continuously as an overview to all my papers. Yet, I would never use it as a single source.  In fact, I like many others, was told not to use it as a works cited source in my projects.  But now days, it is common practice to do so.  I agree with James P. Purdy, Writing Spaces, that Wikipedia is perfectly fine to use as a gateway to other sources.  Yet Wikipedia represents our society where there is a one-to-many relationship.  There is no longer one author but many authors and many entries.  Therefore, a single posting can become a collaborative content.  

While collaboration may appear to be a good thing, the context isn’t alway true.  Maybe that means that the larger it gets, it loses it’s integrity.  Yet our ability to think logically and reason is crucial in this world of participatory culture that fosters creativity and innovation. Wikipedia is a platform that brings contents and creating context together and given the abundance of information, there is no wonder that we cannot do without it. There are those who say Wikipedia is dying, but even with its inconsistant quality of information, it is still the best encyclopedia we have ever had.