Week Nine

1. The “power law distribution” or “long tail” phenomenon, as seen in behavior online on the Wikipedia, suggests that the concept of an average user of wikipedia is meaningless. Support your answer: how do you think a local, “JMU only” version of the Wikipedia would compare to the worldwide version? Would it be very similar? Higher quality? Less quality? Why?

To have a JMU only version of Wikipedia I think would be successful, but not at the beginning. It takes time for any new trend to pick up speed and that is what would happen with the JMU version. This new version of Wikipedia would consist of current JMU students, faculty members, alumni and perspective students can join as well. Anyone can write on the website, which leads to concerns of people writing incorrect information on the website. Also there would be a limited number of users and the amount of users would vary depending on student enrollment. I think that students might post information that is not important or could be hurtful to others so that could be a negative effect of the JMU only version of Wikipedia. Overall I think having a JMU only version of Wikipedia would be an interesting experiment and most likely successful.

2. After reading the article about Scratch and exploring the Scratch website, what are some observable benefits in creating a space to share student work?

There are several benefits of creating a space to share student work. For example the Scratch website was created initially to focus on an area where students can be interactive and share their work with other peers. Students are able to share, evaluate and discuss each others projects posted on the website. This allows students to learn how to communicate effectively together, collaborate their ideas and help others. It is important for the younger population to learn the new technologies because they are the future and technology is the future. Scratch not only allows academic growth, but it gives younger students the opportunity to learn a new website and new technology. This website allows them to be innovative and creative. With the website students are allowed to demonstrate their work without having to talk to people if they feel uncomfortable in a large setting. Some students may feel more comfortable posting their work online and working together that way. Scratch is a great idea and will be popular and successful in the future.