Working together on the web

Collaborative writing is not a good experience for me personally. Usually when doing a group writing project, collaborative writing is needed. However, it's so hard to keep the consistency of writing style as group members and i have got totally different habit. Our language used, tone and skills varies a lot. I'v got an painful experience that that when all the writing works of my group members and I are gathered, we have to sit together to go through the whole piece of work together. Our goal is to make the writing to have similar style without big contrast. Frankly, it's quite time- consuming! Although the writing can include lots of different information and great ideas from others, the process is too long.

Although collaborative writing has its own minor disadvantage, still it is compulsory in the reality. By using tool specifically designed, we can edit document in real time others can edit it again in a minute. Therefore, when I first came up with Google Docs, I was excited! Time for sending email can be saved and I am no longer worry about whether I have mixed up the final version of the papers or not!!

So a platform for people to write and express their own thoughts is important. WIKIPEDIA actually is very successful in this way. It lets people to contribute their ideas on the web and let anyone to edit it again. Although the reliability of the information is a question, the site can provide answer to the browers with a lot of questions. And this site become a hot choice when people have got any questions.

Therefore, I think collaborative writing is very powerful. And the digital technology make it more convenient. The development of the collaborative writing tool may change my attitude towards group work in the future!

MORE THAN WORDS

When I was just a little kid, I had a diary. I wrote down what happened and how I felt on a particular day. Sometime I kept secrets in the diary and didn't want anyone to know about it. As a silly innocent child, I was so worry about my mum would find out the diary and read my words! At that time, I couldn't think of drawing pictures to express my feelings instead of writing exactly what happened. What I want to say is people in this generation not only use text to convey massages, but also use various kinds of media to do so. I used to keep a diray to record my daily life whan I was small. However, now I start up a blog on the internet to share my life to my dear friends. I can also share videos, songs and pictures with them. Sometimes text can not help me to depict my life and feelings at all, then I would use pictures to express my happiness or outrage. Pictures, are powerful.

Inspired bt the lecture, I remembered I have played a meaningful card game before. Before I introduce this to you, let me ask you a question. 

Which of the following photos can represent your life at this moment?

 



Is it difficult for you?You may think of lots of  different stuff when you look at these pictures, or you may get nothing from them. Actually these are the photos extracted from a tool called "SOULARIUM"

SOULARIUM is a communication tool which help people to connect with another person easily. In other words, it helps start up a conversation. It consist of 50 photos in which interviewer ask a few questions to interviwee, and he pick up a photo that can describe the answer the best. During the process, the interviwer would ask WHY they choose a particular photo to answer the questions.

Those few quetions include...
Which photo can represent your life at this moment?
Which photo can represent your dream or ideal life?
Which photo would you use to describe GOD in your view?

I think SOULARIUM is a very intriguing tool that opan up a conversation. We all have different minds and experience. Therefore we can have different explaination to different photos. I may feel sad about a photo of a hand holding a little bird, but the other may feel happy for it! A photo can have various interpretations. There is no modal answer.The question is not what you look at, but what you see. These photos help people who don't know how to express themselves and they can guide them to think more. SOILARIUM can lead us to get to know more about others and even ourselves. It's interesting that we may have two opposite interpretation to the same photo at different point of our lives.

When I first look at these photos, I feel excited that I really can associate with things that I never think about.

Actually I own a set of it and I like to share these photos with my friends in order to know them better! If you want to go throught a journey of speaking with your soul, let me know and I will share it with you!