Collaborative Problem-Solving

To complete our group project, Tara, Antonio and I used SacCT, e-mail and our Wiki to communicate. We found out the hard way that we should have also traded personal e-mails and phone numbers and set up a time to meet online. Antonio had to go out of town and was not able to access SacCT. Therefore - he was inaccessible to Tara and I until late Sunday afternoon. This caused quite a few problems in our problem-solving process and it affected our overall product and grade. Technology is wonderful, but if the internet goes down, if someone's computer fails or if one member of the group cannot reach the others, everything will fall apart. If I were teaching a class, I would make sure students working in groups share their phone numbers as well as their e-mail addresses. That way, if the class is using a school-wide network for communication, they will have alternate ways to communicate should the network go down. I would also have group members set a time to meet online in a chat room. According to our text, chats are a great place for learners to try out non-academic language in an authentic setting. It would have been great if Tara, Antonio and I had set up a time for a chat. That way we would have been assured of at least one time when we were all working on the project at the same time. Still learning . . . .

Group Project 1 Evaluation

Group project 1, which you recently completed, was an example of a collaborative problem-solving task (where the problem was how to integrate technology into instruction for a particular group of students). Reflect on your experiences completing this project, and post an entry on your blog in which you discuss the following questions: 1.How did your group use technology to work collaboratively? We communicated through SacCT e-mail about the Wiki Tara created using the documents we e-mailed to her. 2.How could you have used technology in additional ways to help your work? We could have exchanged schedules and chatted in real time. We could have used the resources for communication Dr. Heather provided for your use as a Learning Group. 3.What did you learn about technology, collaborative work, problem-solving, and/or interaction by doing the group project? I have done many group projects via different electronic modes. I have used Google docs, e-mail, and chats. Through the project, I learned about Wikis - how to set them up, how to create hyperlinks and internal links -- those are new skills. I also learned that after 4 years of college group projects, I am able to work quickly and efficiently in a short amount of time to complete a project -- even one that seemed too involved to complete in one week. I think we did a good job - our lesson plans are thorough and practical and would also be interesting to students - a fairly high degree of authenticity. 4.How can what you learned inform your own teaching (either in the second language classroom, or elsewhere)? I definitely plan to use the information I have learned to provide students in any classroom with collaborative technology experiences. I think learning can be more fun and the results more polished.

Group Project #1

PeggyAntonioTara did a great job on our first CALL group project. Tara is the internet wizard. Check it out: https://sites.google.com/site/peggyantoniotara/