Social Networking for Social Change: Reflective Post # 3

Upon completion of this project, I am fully satisfied with the product my group has produced, and I am also satisfied with my own work and felt I definitely made positive contributions to our Causes page. I felt my blog post was informative and well written, and I also wrote the welcome note for the site. The welcome note is intended to provide any person visiting our site with general information about our cause, and what our purpose/main objective is as a group. Furthermore, the welcome note is intended to inform visitors about the function of each specific component of the site (Blog, forum, events calendar, etc.) Below I have included my welcome note. I feel not only does it demonstrate some of my best work from this project, but it also explains my groups main objectives we aimed to fulfill over the course of our project:

Welcome to Stop The Scams. We invite anyone and everyone to join our cause, whether it is to assist us in spreading awareness, prevent people from falling victim to a scam, or to increase your knowledge about the scams that exist in our society today. We hope that our site will serve as a useful resource to anyone looking to educate themselves and make a difference in a world where scams have become so prevalent. This is the main purpose and goal of our site, and we hope that all of it's applications and features will contribute towards the successful achievement of these goals. Anyone who reads our blog and will surely gain knowledge about some of the most common and dangerous scams out there. Our site will also include an events calendar consisting of regional events relating to our cause. Our discussion forum will open the floor to anyone wishing to comment, share, and discuss their feelings/experience/knowledge relating to any type of scam. We feel that if all users utilize our site properly, we can fulfill our motto, "Together, we can Stop The Scams."

I believe that my groups page and its content fulfills everything outlined in this welcome note. Every component of our site serves to its overall function/goal of helping to inform and protect people from different types of scams. This past Monday's class was a peer review session, during which another group offered their critiques of the draft version of our site. Unfortunatley due to car problems I did not get back to school from Thanksgiving break until late on Monday night, so I missed this important class. However, I communicated with my group via the Sakai forum and they told me that our peer review group had suggested we condense my welcome note draft for the final project. Keith was able to successfully condense my draft in a way that we all feel better serves the site. My group worked extremely well together and we are all satisfied with the outcome of our collective efforts.

This project was a very useful learning experience for me. As I mentioned in a previous post, I do feel very strongly about the potential social networking sites hold as a means of mobilizing people towards any kind of cause/effort. I hope that in the future I will be involved in working for a cause/effort that I feel passionately about. When this time comes, the skills I have learned concerning utilizing the powers of social networking sites will be extremely helpful.