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 . . . .