In What Would Google Do? Jeff Jarvis describes how Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, did at Harvard when faced with the prospect of failing his art course:
‘He went to the internet and downloaded images of all the peices of art he knew would be covered in the exam. He put them on a web page and added blank boxes under each. Then he emailed the address of this page to his classmates, telling them he’d just put up a study guide… The class… filled in the blanks with the essential knowledge about each peice of art, editing each other as they went, collaborating to get it just right… Zuckerberg aced the exam [and] the professor said the class as a whole got better grades than usual. They captured the wisdom of the crowd…’ (p. 49 – my italics).
The purpose of this blog is to provide students with the opportunity to create the perfect revision tool for each of the examined courses in the media department at Benton Park Tech College in Leeds, UK. Each student will be able to access the blog and contribute to the pages set up around topics and texts. You will all be able to edit the entries as well as adding comments.
Of course, some may think that they’ll let everyone else to the work and benefit from the blog anyway. If everyone decides to do that no one will benefit; if everyone contributes, everyone benefits greatly (and there’s no doubt actually contributing to the blog will in itself be a form of very effective revision).
You can find the topics and texts you are studying by using the categories and tags. To be able to edit the blog you need to create a WordPress account and send me the email you used in registering with them: media@bentonparkmedia.co.uk
