Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Interactivity #3
I would consider that the group process for this interactivity was an authentic collaboration. I personally prefer working alone on projects. This is because I feel its fair to be graded by my work rather than the work of others. Often times people do not pull their own weight in groups and as a result, the entire group suffers. Also, it is usually difficult to organize a group towards working on and finishing an assignment. However, I was surprised to see that this group project was easier to accomplish than I had expected. It was nice to see my group members take initiative and this was evident when Jess started the Google Doc. She also emailed everyone in our group so that we could be added into the Google group. Bobby made sure to text me and remind me to email Jess my Gmail account. Google Docs was also very easy and convenient to use, especially in a group setting. Rather than email numerous drafts of the same Excel document, we could edit and save our progress in real time. In the Google Doc, my group members and I contributed by adding in our technology findings into the spreadsheet. The revision history tool was useful as it showed our individual contributions to the final project. This is beneficial to the group and the teacher because it shows the amount of effort made by each group member. So, because of the organization and work output I would consider this project an authentic group collaboration.
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Rob - your blog post is especially interesting to me as we worked on the project together and I know what it took to truly collaborate. That being said, what do you think would be the most effective way of implementing this technology into a social studies classroom?
ReplyDeleteRob - I have to disagree that this was an authentic group project. But, that may because our definition of group work is different. I feel a face to face or clear communication is needed. Rather than just posting individual work to a spreadsheet like we did. Google Docs is great, but I had trouble with it saving what I contributed under my account. I posted my ten things on Monday and nothing is there. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteRob,
ReplyDeleteI definitely can relate to you with your preference to work alone on projects. Group mates are unpredictable and can be unreliable. Many times, I have been forced into a group where there is always that one person who relies on everyone else to do the work, while they weasel their way into trying to get an A when they have no work to justify it. This was why I was worried about working in a group for this interactivity because I was unsure of everyone's work ethic. But, Google Docs offered group members a sense of security by allowing that the professor to see who contributed what.
Luckily, Google Docs was extremely simple to use and made collaboration and individual contributions seamless. And I agree with you that this was an authentic group collaboration.
Robert, so if Group A's creation was identical to Group B's in content, except that Group A's was a mess, would Group A not have authentic collaboration?
ReplyDelete