Journal 8

I believe collaboration is when two or more individuals work together and exchange ideas in order to achieve a common goal. When I think of collaborating, I think of when my friends and I get together and work on these different banner projects for my sorority. We usually meet once a week to get an idea of what kind of banner we want to create and we all exchange designs. Usually, the final banner is a mix of all of our designs and the final outcome is much better because of this.

In Jenkins’ article, “Why Heather Can Write: Media Literacy and the Harry Potter Wars” the story of Heather Lawver is a fantastic example of collaboration. Lawver’s creation of The Daily Prophet, a fictional online newspaper, allows students and kids from all over the world to collaborate their ideas and publish their own works in a free and safe environment. Without the creation of this newspaper, a lot of these kids would not have the ability to collaborate together and create the pieces of writing that they have.

I think collaboration plays a much bigger role in everyday writing than people realize. It is so important because two people writing together can create so many more ideas and possibly much better ideas than if they were just writing alone. My friend has actually recently been writing a few episodes of his own for a possible future comedy show. He says when he works together with his friends he ends up with a lot of hilarious situations that he never would have thought of if he was just writing alone.