Midterm Auditing Assignment; GTA and Wikipedia

So all in all the Midterm project went pretty well. My group (which consisted of JoJo, Neuteboom, my brother, and Zach) all met at my brother's apartment to endure some work, and some fun. Before even commenting on the actual auditing process and the PowerPoint, I would like to say that this group assignment really created a sense of community and bonding between the group members. While in class, I stood witness to some of Neuteboom's absurd comments, but in a closed environment I actually learned that Neuteboom was an OK guy (haha), and bore witness to his poor skills in the classic Mario Party I (we only played after we had decided to end work for the night). All in all, I wish more of my classes had implemented group assignments. In big lecture classes (3/4 of my classes are big lectures), it is hard to gain the sense of community and communication with others in the class, but these group projects really help the student feel like he is an essential piece to something, much unlike the feeling of being a statistic in a huge state school.

OK. So the actual process was pretty fun as well. While we were all posted up at Jon's apartment, we were researching away on our individual laptops. The main PowerPoint was created on JoJo's laptop, however that did not stop the other group members from doing work. We all volunteered to choose certain sources from the page and audit them, type them on our own processors, and then email or IM them to JoJo's computer. We specifically chose sources that seemed to cite major pieces of information within the page, and then began auditing. Before I start to bash some of the wrongly cited sources, I must say that almost all of the information on the page seemed to be correct, regardless of whether or not the specific source actually had reliable information on its webpage (Most of the unreliable sources were blogs or other pieces of information posted by individuals that did not belong to a gaming, or news company). There were also a lot of good sources too- ABC News, CNN, IGN, and Gamespot all provided succint and clear information that was easily transferred onto the Wiki page. Neuteboom was very crucial in actually constructing the PowerPoint, adding his insightful remarks and witty writing style into the otherwise bleak show. All in all, I personally had a great time doing this project, as I am sure others did as well.