Dispensing Information and Gaining Knowledge through the Internet - Essay Example

Reflective Essay Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation We live in a very dynamic world where knowledge is ever increasing and changing. There is a lot of data being generated each and every second and this has led to the different forms of information storage and dispensation tools to be developed. One of the leading means of dispensing information and gaining knowledge is through the internet. In this unit I was privileged to work with a team of other students and we chose to do a research on movies and we settled on Titanic, Hangover, Notebook and Pulp Fiction of which I suggested adding the trailers for each film. In this unit I got to learn the importance of learning and communicating online. I was introduced to the importance and relevance of using the internet in today’s world to gain information, and how to disseminate this information especially among group members and other people. I used valuable sources to gain insight on the Titanic which broadened my perspective on the ordeals that faced the production of the movie (Aldridge, 2008). Especially how I got to understand, according to Lynch of how the casting and roles for the movie were done. This was quite ahead of its time (Lynch, 2010). At the beginning I learnt how to create and sent group emails. Further into the unit I got to learn how to chat with my friends through the internet as we interacted when arguing out and evaluating the researches that we had come up with. According to Carless when a group undertaking an online research get to argue out their positions and come up with a combined agreement there is always a high support for the final decisions arrived (Carless, 2006). Working within a group environment was very awesome experience for me in various aspects. According to Roberts, collaboration in online learning is a new learning experience that is fast on the rise (Roberts, 2004). The pros to these were; Firstly, the division of tasks ensured that we were able to cover quite a lot of information from the internet in good time. This was because each individual was able to fully concentrate on a given movie or title and do thorough research on it. The result was just as Bennett, March and Killen had stated that we were able to come up with relevant and far reaching information that gave more credibility and weight and content to our final work (Bennett, March & Killen, 2007).. This was opposed if I could have done it personally because I would have felt so bogged down with the surge of information I would had to go through within such a short time. To this extend I highly salute my team members. Secondly, working in a team proved to be very satisfying. This is because in the course of carrying out the research each and every one of us came with different perspectives and information on issues. At times these perspectives would clash, but we were able to argue them out to the point of coming to an amicable decision. These decisions were acceptable to the group thus made them (decisions) easy to support. According to International Conference on Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Assessment, & Frankland, the fact that we could argue and make compromises was a sure sign that we were working towards one goal and this gave the group members and I more morale to give our contributions (I C & Frankland, 2007). Thirdly working within a group setting made it easy to sift through the information we got from the net and be able to choose the correct sources we needed. This would have been quite tasking if I was to do it by myself. Pratt and Pallof rightfully captured this when they asserted,” Advantages of the internet are that its faster than most research methods, access to articles & databases from multiple libraries, condensed info makes finding relevant topics easier and offers wider range of media”( Pallof & Pratt, 2008) Working with team in the online resources projects wasn’t that all rosy, there were times when it proved to be quite challenging. For instance there were times when some group members did not communicate appropriately to the group in regard to the progress of their specific tasks. These group members did not get to reply the emails that were sent to them in time. A case in point is when I had emailed a member to send me their findings so that I could evaluate it and add it into the main work before we could consider submitting our job. This particular member went offline in the social sites, on phone and even refrained from replying the numerous emails that were sent to him. This according to Mayer, lead to one person holding hostage the whole group since his work was very pivotal in contributing towards our general work making sense (Mayer, 2005).. In addition to this, there were times when some group members submitted shoddy work and the rest of the team felt that this lack of commitment was disrespectful especially to those who had done theirs well. In my opinion I felt that those who were not doing their jobs to the standards were taking advantage of the goodwill of the other members who could not stand submitting below the standard jobs. According to Vrasidas and Glass, this is one of the shortcomings of distant collaborative online learning; one does not get to have as much control on the less effort or lack of it in other members’ work (Vrasidas & Glass, 2002). Reaching in the internet for this project thus had more advantages when working in a team than working individually. As I was doing my part of the research on the internet I got to learn and experience a lot in the process. The most outstanding thing I got to experience was how I managed to use emails to communicate and harmonize the work environment of the group. According to Orvis and Lassiter, emailing is one of the fastest communicating method that greatly conveys exactly what one intends as you get to write exactly what you intend to communicate(Orvis & Lassiter, 2007). I was tasked to lead in notifying each member what was required of each of them. I managed to this by first recommending to our team members to adopt the use of email for communication and sending feedback when this was agreed upon I gathered everyone’s contact details and sent a copy to each person and ensure that everyone it get. I also volunteered to research on Titanic and suggested adding the trailers for each film. In the virtue of being the leader to this group I challenged myself to do an outstanding job. I managed to go to the internet and surf for the necessary information I wanted. I dug deep into online journals, books and publications on the reviews of the titanic and came to see some insights I had not been accustomed to. This greatly opened my eyes to the vastness of information that the internet offers. In addition to this as I was using the Google chrome browser to access the internet I got to appreciate its user friendly interface (Pozzi & Persico, 2010). When I typed for the subject I wanted on the search bar, I was able to be provided with thousands of alternatives which I was able to click on some of them and got to access relevant materials. This was very time consuming if I would compare it with going to the library and physically searching for relevant books and going through them to get the information I wanted in the condensed but relevant manner I wanted. However I must admit I had a slight problem with referencing at the beginning but as I went on with the project I managed to seek advice from one of my team members who took his time to explain to me how it was to be carried out. Furthermore the template that two of my group members had created on the sample template provided by our supervisor, was a great help to me as it was the guideline I used in my work (West & West, 2009). It was not lost to me that the major marking point for this project was the presentation and not the topic. This I readily reminded my group members and even pushed myself forward to learn how to use Prezi so that I could be ready whenever I was called to upload my work (Verdejo & Cerri, 1994). The rest of the team also edited their jobs and put them in the right presentation formats before handing them to me. I was thus able to evaluate their relevance and quality before joining their work into one final work. To this extend I appreciated that online collaboration saves each team member time because the progress and results can be presented in real time, thus allowing them to make the valuable corrections of the work stage by stage. This also ensured the detection of errors early in the work and we were able to cut off any spiraling effect that could arise from such errors. In conclusion I would like to assert categorically that collaboration in-group assessment is very effective. From the discussion above it is clear that this mode of learning and doing projects highly inculcate efficiency in terms of saving time and makes learning more fun. In regard to sourcing information from the internet, I cannot over look the simplicity that the internet offers, especially when using the right browser, in availing information. The user friendliness of this mode of accessing knowledge at a very high speed is very vital especially in the kind of research that we were doing (Wright, 2005). The movie industry has a lot of content on the reviews of the movies we were researching on. This provided us with a fertile ground from which we could choose our sources and information to build our final project. References Aldridge, R. (2008). The sinking of the Titanic. New York: Chelsea House. Bennett, S., Marsh, D., & Killen, C. (2007). Handbook of online education. London: Continuum. Carless, D. (2006). How assessment supports learning: Learning-oriented assessment in action. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univ. Press. International Conference on Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Assessment, & Frankland, S. (2007). Enhancing teaching and learning through assessment. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Lynch, D. (2010). Titanic: An Illustrated History. S.l.]Madison Press Books. Mayer, R. E. (2005). The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning. New York: University of Cambridge. Orvis, K. L., & Lassiter, A. L. R. (2007). Computer-supported collaborative learning: Best practices and principles for instructors. Hershey, PA: Information Science Pub. Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2004). Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Palloff, R. M., Pratt, K., & Palloff, R. M. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Pozzi, F., & Persico, D. (2010). Techniques for fostering collaboration in online learning communities: Theoretical and practical perspectives. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. Roberts, T. S. (2004). Online collaborative learning: Theory and practice. Hershey, Pa. [u.a.: Information Science Publ. Vrasidas, C., & Glass, G. V. (2002). Distance education and distributed learning. Greenwich, Conn: Information Age Pub. Verdejo, M. F., Cerri, S. A., North Atlantic Treaty Organization., & NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Collaborative Dialogue Technologies in Distance Learning. (1994). Collaborative dialogue technologies in distance learning. Berlin: Springer-Verlag West, J. A., & West, M. L. (2009). Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write Web. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Wright, V. H. (2005). Research on enhancing the interactivity of online learning. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publ. Read More