Experiencing Wikispaces

1. What did you like best about the project and why?
The thing that I enjoyed most about this project is that I got to work with peers outside of Hawaii, so it wasn't just my classmates and my teacher reading the story I had written. Not only was the experience exciting, but also the writing process where I got to ask my dad questions about my great-great-great grandfather and I got to learn more about my roots and the people of my blood that lived before me. It was interesting to learn about the lifestyle that my grandfather had and the difficulties he had gone through and that he was forced to cope with. My grandfather had made the best out of everything and I really respect him for what he had done for everyone, even under difficult circumstances.
2. What did you like least and why?
I didn't like that the editors didn't actually get to edit the papers like you do when you correct papers, editing spelling, grammatical errors and inserting different ideas within the paper. It was difficult to edit parts of the paper because it was difficult to open up and fix ideas that I wanted to change. I also had technological issues because I couldn't put the garageband recording that I had made properly like other people had done.
3. What was something surprising that you learned about the other students (from other schools)?
The Korean students were very studious and worked hard on their own stories while spending time to edit other people's as well. Unfortunately for the Colorado students, they had been taking other exams at the time so they didn't spend too much time on working on their stories and weren't as productive as the Korean students had been. Most of the students that edited my story gave really good feedback and I changed many parts with their help.
4. How do you think the project affected your writing?
I think that I paid a lot of attention to tenses and tried to express my story and 'paint a picture' instead of just saying outright who my grandfather was. I learned to be a little more creative and also that the problem that I have when writing is my word choice. A lot of times I can't get the right words to fit in with my sentences and therefore my stories aren't as interesting as they could be. This I learned from feedback from the students from Korea and Colorado. Now I try to keep an open mind about vocabularies that I can use and how I can make my story pop out and be more colorful instead of staying in the dark with black and white.
5. Describe the most challenging aspect of the project.
The most challenging aspect of this project was basically just the technological issues that I had. I didn't know how to use certain things on the wikispaces and it was actually quite difficult to manage. It was also challenging editing on the wikispaces because I'm so used to working with word. The buttons and functions were all so confusing it took awhile to get used to.
6. Offer some advice to future participants.
My advice to future participants would be to ask any questions you have about the wikispaces and don't just try to do everything on your own. I hadn't really asked any of my peers or my teacher how certain things worked so I was left to figure out everything by myself.
7. Other comments.
This was a different and fun experience for me, I've never done anything like this before, so I'm glad that I got to try it.