WIKIS, SKYPE AND MUCH MORE

Hi world!
I’m here once again to report my week experience.

My Skype exchange was quite interesting but very different from the previous ones in some points.

• Summing up all the questions of the people in the course, we obtained a long list of questions to ask our peer. It was good because I succeeded in talking for almost an hour about renewable energy resources; however, I think my peer was a little shocked by my promptness of speech on this topic and it produced a destabilizing factor that is that she had not the same promptness in answering.
• The list made me feel more confident about my linguistic and cultural competences.
• On the other hand, I confess that I was embarrassed because my peer kept on saying that New Orleans problems are not recycling or renewable energy, they are greater. I asked Nichole about solar panels and she replied that it’s difficult to install them in old houses which hardly have a roof. We started laughing but there was nothing to laugh about!
• When I talked about my interests, such as writing and cinema, I found that we can have a better conversation, not just a tit-for-tat dialogue.
  

This week we had to reflect on wikis AS WELL.

Writing and editing wikis is rather complicated because you have to pay attention to what your colleagues wrote before you and try not to say the same things even if your thoughts are quite similar.
Furthermore, you have to quote them in order to show your teacher that you really had a look on their comments.

Rethinking the structure of a wiki is an operation that might take hours and produce scarce results if one of your colleagues decides to change your modifications. That’s why I think it’s better to work in small groups of 2 or 3 people, depending on the quantity of information the wiki contains.
In this way each person learns how to collaborate and how to give his/her contribution without relying too much on a bigger group.
My teacher tried out this method and we are having the verdict next Monday but I’m quite sure the result will be excellent.
The “comment button” helped me a lot in consulting my peers on the best term to be used or the division on different paragraphs. In this way I could change whatever I wanted and have an immediate comment on what I was doing.
In my opinion if we want to be closer to the “old way of wiking”, we should work on others’ pages in order to be more impartial.

See you next time (next week) for Easter time!

To be continued in the next instalment.

Francesca