Peer Reviewing Complete!

From what I have observed on the discussion board during the course of the weekend, quite a few of us 'external' students submitted their work early for peer review. Initially on the Saturday when I heard people had started to do this, I panicked. I wasn't quite ready I thought and was concerned that, what if mine didn't get a review?!

I put my draft up for review late Sunday afternoon.  I wanted to put it up early incase I came across any problems or experienced any technical glitches uploading my site onto the peer review system.

By Monday afternoon I was happy, relieved that I had submitted successfully on time and had already received three reviews from my peers!  All of which gave relatively positive feedback. So thank you to those three people!

Reviewing my peers sites has overall been highly rewarding, although challenging. A good learning experience I believe for us all!

I was very hesitant to begin with and conscientious about how I would go about phrasing my feedback. I didn't want my reviewee to feel that I was being negative towards their site, but I really wanted to give honest constructive feedback that could potentially help improve their work, if required. 

I was told once by a teacher 'For every negative you should give two positives'.

My first reviewer started by giving some nice positive feedback. Their feedback was very constructive, and after a little further research I was able to answer their query. They posed a question relating to whether the technology was equally compatible with Windows and Mac users. 

I was a little confused by this feedback to begin with as I had mentioned on my social resource page that the reason for choosing Keep Recipes as my technology was that... 

'Keep Recipes does not exclude anyone, no matter whether they are using PC or Mac.'

After researching the topic further I discovered what they had meant. "Do they only have a video for Mac users?"  I had overlooked the fact that the You Tube link provided instructions using screen shots from a Mac. The reviewer queried whether the same instructions were valid for PC's.

I jumped onto another computer (PC) to test out what happend when I tried to follow my instructions and the YouTube link. In doing so I found that  the instructions worked for both systems, but found slight glitch that PC users may come across. 

When dragging the icon...              

into your favourites bar (I was using Google Chrome on a PC) the tab or link appeared as

rather than

The icon still worked however was not clearly labeled to resolve this I simply used the alterative text link

and it worked fine! I have learnt from this that I will need to make a note / comment somewhere on my social site to inform PC users about this.


My second reviewer commented: 

Again, initially I was confused, I found this comment a little unclear. I am not quite sure what they meant. So I revisited my website.... then my Blog. I looked down at the bottom of the page to the comments page and understood what they had meant.  I know other people have been able to make comments before, there must be somewhere in the settings I can change this.

In my Blogger Settings I found an option to
change these settings, now anyone is able to make a comment on my blog! Thanks for this feedback!

My third and final review was quite positive and did not alert me to any significant improvements or changes to my site.

Given access to constructive criticism through peer reviews has led me to place myself in the shoes of the user.This has ultimately led to refinement and improvement of my assignment.