Some Final Reflections on the Module

I have really enjoyed this module. It has helped me overcome initial concerns about my technical abilities and definitely made me more confident than ever to embrace new media. Whilst I have learned basics such as making a screenshot of a website, I have also experienced how easy it actually is to construct your own website.

I have particularly benefited from the discussions we had in class, which made me question some of my assumptions. I have also really enjoyed attending the Walking the Digital Dog lecture advertised by Nigel earlier this term, as well as learning about Open Source Software. What’s more, more often than not I now tend to use Firefox as a browser instead of Internet Explorer. Initially I haven’t noticed much difference between the two of them. Having worked on our group wiki though I was soon to find out that our project website looks appalling and incredibly chaotic when opened with Firefox. This made me realize how, even online, it is difficult to escape corporate claws.

Our expectations, as Nigel repeatedly mentioned, for things online to be free is also something I’ve come to question. I have already briefly touched upon this in my post on Second Life so I won’t go into further detail here.

Indeed, the module has aroused a fascination with Second Life in me. I have now established a Second Life presence and I’m still taken aback by the virtual world. Upon noticing that most avatars are designed according to prevailing cultural ideals, I’ve tried my hardest to go against this trend. My avatar is thus old and chubby. Maybe this is the cause for my unpopularity within Second Life as I have yet to make friends there.

This leads me to another observation in regards to Second Life that strikes me: the emphasis on and obsession with appearance and accordingly consumption. It seems as though our online actions are a mere perpetuation of our offline actions.

By now I even got into the habit of blogging. As aforementioned I believe in many cases blogging is very valuable for it often provides a counterpoint to mainstream media coverage. Reconsidering my previous reflections on blogging, I would like to add that I now understand how blogging might help me share, explore, shape and develop my ideas by putting them into the public domain and leaving them open to feedback. Hence, I’ve come a long way from being extremely insecure about sharing my thoughts online even if I might not continue to keep a blog immediately after this module.

I have certainly become more careful with revealing personal information about myself on both Facebook and StudiVZ so as to avoid advertising myself for identity theft.

Finally, I have one minor reservation in regards to the module: Although I can’t deny that I have acquired some important technical skills, I would have liked the module to put more emphasis on the technical aspects. Since our course is generally more academically charged, I think it would have been nice to do something more technologically challenging.

Nonetheless, with the growing ubiquity of new media technologies in the workplace this module was undoubtedly useful for my future, regardless of what career I will be pursuing.

Reflections on the Group Project

As I have already made references to group dynamics in earlier posts, I will try and keep this short so as to avoid repetition.

With the last nine weeks having gone by rather quickly, I’m pleased to say that Karl, Neng and I have finally managed to complete our group project on Virtual Communities.

Although we experienced some communication difficulties to begin with, which lead to one of the group members leaving the group to concentrate on their own project, I believe that overall Karl, Neng and I worked very well together as a group.

As our ideas concerning virtual communities evolved throughout the course, we ended up changing the direction of our group project constantly. Researching material on the topic I believe really helped us define and shape our ideas for the project. Above all however it seems that the animated discussions we had within the group in order to find a suitable definition for the term community which we could all agree on, lead us to decide upon exploring the concept itself by means of the project.

Whilst we didn’t allocate specific roles within the group, we nevertheless decided to divide the project thematically. I found this very effective since it allowed each of us to thoroughly research one aspect of ‘virtual community’ we were particularly interested in. It also helped relieve individual work load and thus made us work more efficiently. Even though our styles of writing differ immensely, we decided not to edit our website’s content. I actually believe that the different styles of writing in relation to our case ctudies work quite well, since it bestows a certain sense of character upon them.

The only concern I have in regards to the content is the fact that we haven’t been able to cover all the numerous ways the term community can be understood within cyberspace. I realize that we only had limited time available, which naturally requires selection. Besides, we ended up becoming a group of three only, which made it somewhat difficult to cover the whole range of virtual communities and their different aspects in the first place. Despite all this, I believe we have coped really well by managing to take into account the most important aspects of virtual community within our case studies.

Personally, if there had been more time, I’d have enjoyed studying Second Life and/ or World of Warcraft as a virtual community in addition to Social Networking Sites for this project. World of Warcraft interests me on a personal level mainly because my teenage brother has developed a passion for it. As for Second Life, the concept still intrigues me. Since I could not consider it in regards to this project however, I have chosen Second Life as my subject of study for my essay for the New Media/ New Technologies module that ran parallel to this course.

I’m also very pleased with the look of our wiki page, which was designed collectively. We went for a rather minimalist design and decided not to include too many pictures so as to avoid making the website look unnecessarily crammed. If you ask me, we have successfully transformed a rather unaesthetic wiki page into a pleasantly-designed website, which was probably the most challenging aspect of this module.

Indeed, I have tried my very best to make our web page look as consistent as possible. As a result, I’ve become very confident with using the wiki and have also acquired some basic html skills.

As I have no doubt mentioned numerous times before on here, I can be a bit of a perfectionist as well as extremely determined. Hence when faced with a problem I preoccupy myself with it until I have found a solution to it. Whilst this is certainly positive in that I don’t allow problems to demotivate me, it can also hold up progress. I have thus not yet stopped agonizing about the wiki programme’s stubbornness in refusing to accept my cell padding changes from 10 to 20, albeit having tried everything in my power to no avail. I have made sure though that I paid attention to more important issues and not allow it to impede our progress. Nigel in fact gave me some good advice last Monday: there are more important things than fretting about cell padding, even if it is (only) going for a beer in the pub. ;o)

Having finished the project, I have to admit though that I am nowhere closer to an understanding of what community is. The term community has certainly evolved and come to mean so many different things at once, it seems impossible to establish a unanimous definition. As I have already discussed the notion of community here, I will not go into much further detail. I nonetheless feel that I should add to my previous consideration of the notion of community where I have expressed a sense of belonging for a village community tied to the street I used to live in for most of my life. It occurred to me that the reason I have chosen to move to a metropolitan city like London may be linked to this kind of village community. Whilst it undoubtedly provides support in many ways, it is also incredibly suffocating. Nine weeks ago, I would have associated the notion of community with almost exclusively positive attributes. Whereas now I have gained a better understanding of how often such positive traits are inextricably linked with negative aspects.

Overall, I’m very pleased with how the group project went. Apart from some (may I say major) initial communication problems that were nevertheless quickly resolved, we haven’t encountered any major drawbacks. I even believe that throughout the group project my decision making skills have developed.

I’m satisfied with our final project and I also believe we got on very well as a group even though it was the first time Neng, Karl and I have worked together. I’d therefore like to end this post with a big THANK YOU to Karl and Neng! It was great working with you!

Just a short post to express my delight and gratitude:

YAY! to my previous blog entry – I’ve added a picture and yet the line spacing remained consistent. :o)

The Week Before the Deadline...

In fact I should be sorting out some discrepancies on our group wiki at the moment. When trying to access the website however the following message appears:

Whilst this is undeniably making me feel a little uneasy I’ve decided to write on my blog instead and hope the problem the page is experiencing will be resolved soon.

Speaking of the group wiki, I’ve noticed that our page looks different (and somewhat awkward may I say) when opened with Firefox. I don’t know whether this is something I should be concerned about right now but it is definitely not making me happy. I wonder if we should try and resolve it?

Apart from the above I feel that the group project is coming along quite well. The majority of the writing for the project now seems to be completed. The three of us met on Friday to compose our conclusion. Another group meeting is scheduled for Monday morning to review our introduction as well as to verify and edit the rest of the content if necessary.

Having watched Nigel help us sort out some inconsistencies on Monday, I feel very confident using the wiki now. I’ve realised that often it is more sensible and above all easier and quicker to make amendments in the source, which is what I have been doing lately. I have been experiencing problems trying to amend the cell padding from 10 to 20 in the table properties though. I would love to say that (after hours wasted on this) I’ve stopped agonizing about it. As I can be a bit of a perfectionist this would be a lie. What I can say however is that I understand there are more important issues needing attention right now so I’ve laid that matter to rest. At least for the time being, since it is only a minor formatting problem.

After an insightful (but unfortunately rather brief and interrupted) discussion with Nigel (and some of my fellow students) regarding blogging, I guess I ought to reconsider my reflections on blogging. Maybe I should approach blogging as Eco does teaching and writing for newspapers:
‘That is why I like to teach, to expound still-imperfect ideas and hear the students’ reaction. That is why I like to write for the newspapers, to reread myself the next day, and to read the reactions of others. A difficult game, because it does not always consist of being reassured when you meet with agreement and having doubts when you are faced with dissent. Sometimes you have to follow the opposite course: Distrust agreement and find in dissent the confirmation of your own intuitions’ (1986: xii).

I will elaborate on the above as well as consider the group dynamics and the group project in my final blog entry for this module next week. I hope we will be given until Friday to do so as the work load at the moment feels rather overwhelming, as always at the end of term.

Eco, U. (1986) Travels in Hyperreality. Harcourt Brace & Company: Orlando, Florida.

Reflections on Blogging

Seven weeks into this module, I doubt that I will continue to keep a blog upon the module’s completion. I certainly feel more comfortable about sharing my thoughts online but I still prefer keeping in touch via email or the telephone.

Initially, blogging to me seemed to be me more of a certain kind of one way communication aimed at simultaneously everyone and no-one. That is to say someone who by chance stumbles across my blog may or may not decide to read it.

Having said that, my opinion that blogging is a particular form of one way communication was proven wrong. Anyone is free to leave comments and thus interact with the author. When Mette and I went to the IET’s annual Mountbatten lecture Walking the Digital Dog and subsequently blogged about it, I was positively surprised to find Roo Reynolds (the guy who gave the lecture) had commented on my (/our) entry (/entries) about the event. In this way we entered into a dialogue with Roo Reynolds, albeit unintentionally. Above all, it gave both us and Roo Reynolds the opportunity to clarify any concerns. This is clearly something that with the utmost probability would not have happened had we not blogged about it. Considering this I can’t deny that blogging is undoubtedly advantageous.

Yet to me blogging still feels like writing a diary. In light of this module then blogging I believe is very appropriate as we’re supposed to use it to document our learning progress. Upon the completion of this module however blogging will serve no purpose for me anymore. So my conservative attitude towards blogging doesn’t seem to have changed much. In my defence though I have never been much of a diary person either!

Perhaps I should also add that even though blogging is not my cup of tea, I do approve of websites such as Milblogging that provide a space for soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq (as well as their families) for example to disseminate their first-hand experiences of the war. I regard these blogs as important to our understanding of warfare as they clearly offer a counterpoint to mainstream media coverage of the war in Iraq.

Another thing (totally unrelated to the above) I would like to mention here with regard to blogging is that blogger has left me severely frustrated at times. I’m perhaps a little squeamish in this respect but one thing I find particularly annoying is that lately after adding pictures or videos the spacing of the text beneath the added item seems to decrease (see Good Web Design/ Bad Web Design and Walking the Digital Dog) making the entry look patchy. I have yet to figure out how to prevent this if that is at all possible. Surprisingly in an earlier entry (My first attempt at blogging…) this didn’t happen (or maybe I found a way to set it right and just can’t remember).

Making Progress

As planned we had a brief group meeting before class on Monday. This allowed us to discuss where we’re at in terms of the group project, as well as determine what we believe still needs to be done.

As in class we were given a chance to work within our groups (which I greatly appreciated!), we were able to focus our attention on one of our top priorities this week: sorting out the web design of our wiki page.

Editing the wiki appeared to be more difficult than I first anticipated. Fortunately Neng has some previous experience with html and web design in general, for which I’m very grateful. We opted for a somewhat minimalist design, which is not to say that this is a bad thing. In fact, at present I’m very pleased with the design of our wiki page. I’m especially happy about the choice of colour, which is particularly easy on the eye. Of course, there are still some inconsistencies which we’ll have to work on but most importantly the first step has been taken.

I’ve already played around with the wiki last night and made some minor formatting changes. This definitely made me feel more comfortable with the whole editing process. Monday’s class was thus incredibly valuable: not only did it help ease my concerns voiced in my previous blog entry, but I also feel that I have acquired some important wiki editing skills for this project.

Although I have been feeling a little insecure about adding my (not yet final) written work on social networking sites onto our wiki page, I nevertheless did it yesterday. It is clearly convenient to have everything that is project-related in one place, which will probably make the final editing process easier.

Hopefully by the end of this week our research into virtual communities will be completed and put down in writing so we can start piecing everything together.

Panic setting in…

This week I believe has been the toughest so far. We seem to have lost a group member along the way (?) and with the deadline looming panic is slowly but surely setting in. Having been granted a look at last year’s group projects I have to admit didn’t reduce the panic. Most of their finished websites, if not all of them, were in my opinion very well designed. Considering that we have only swiftly worried about the design of our wiki page this didn’t help. It was good however to get an idea of what is expected of us in terms of written style, as well as quantity and quality of information. Whether we will meet these expectations is another question.

On a more positive note, it was great to be given time to work on our group project in class on Monday. This allowed us to determine a third virtual community as a case study for our group project, namely Freecycle. It was also helpful to be able to consult Nigel in order to eliminate any remaining unclarities with regard to the group project.

I’ve also finally decided to stop reading and start writing. I found that, while interesting and undoubtedly relevant, it is difficult to incorporate all the information I have collected on virtual communities into our project. There just seems to be so much to say about virtual communities that I’m somewhat afraid we won’t be able to do the project justice. For one, there is still plenty of material available on the subject matter that I haven’t had the chance to look at (yet).

In general I also noticed that there is little academic material on social networking sites per se, possibly because they are relatively new phenomena. Overall, out of all the texts I’ve read I found Howard Rheingold’s (2000) revised edition of The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier most useful in regard to this project. I also think that David Bell’s (2001) essay Community and Cyberculture in his book An Introduction to Cybercultures provides a fantastically comprehensive account of the different understandings of community within the field. Unfortunately, Bell’s work is one of many I have read that have found no place in my first written draft on social networking sites.

We have scheduled a group meeting before class this Monday to discuss and edit the work we have done so far. I’m also still unhappy with the design of our web page as already mentioned above. Hopefully we can resolve this problem on Monday as well as start exchanging ideas about images and videos we might want to include.

With two weeks to go I’m still hoping I’ll get a chance to analyse the group dynamics in relation to Belbin and Tuckman’s work as originally intended but time is running out…

IET tv - Walking the Digital Dog Webcast