While working on the Wiki I have learned many things. First of all I have learned that finding research is easy, however, finding reliable, factual research is much more difficult. It is very easy to type in a topic or keyword into google and have hundreds of hits. However, these websites are not necessarily reliable or factual. Also I learned that using the image feature on google is not always a good idea, because the pictures may not be legal for me to use for my own personal use. I am still however confused by the creative commons idea.

Technological: I have learned how to embedded hyper links into the wiki, which look much better than the long lines of Url’s. Also I have learned how to add videos such as youtube and pictures into the wiki by using the insert tool. I feel this is significant because, by adding pictures and videos it makes our page more meaningful to the viewer. I feel that videos and picture add a sense of realness to our topic.

Research: I think having the librarian come into our class and help us discover new ways of finding information was very helpful. I have since then tried using many of the various search engines he suggested such as; Newspaper Source, Jstor, Socindex, Asian American Drama, Oral History Online and Librarian Internet Index. I found these resources to be very useful and much better than Ebscohost which was what I always used prior to this class. I have found some research on the actual statistics of damage, deaths, injuries and various other effects of the riots. I have also found some information on how the riot was stopped and how many actual police officers, military personal and various other people it took. Information on the specific causes, not just Rodney King and Latisha Harlins was found by me as well. I also found information on the pregnant women who was shot during the riots.

Collaboration: I feel my group members have been finding very good information. I am glad we broke our topic up into specific categories in the begging because it made the research process much easier and it kept us organized as a group. I think it is somewhat difficult to work on the project as a whole, without communication, however we all exchanged e-mail addresses and can leave comments on the wiki so we seem to be on the right track. I think we divided the information up equally and we are all doing our equal share in the research process. I think by meeting in our classroom today for a little while it helped us get reorganized and refocused on what needs to be done. I feel I am playing a leadership role in my group.