Going Global
In this day and age, being "off the grid" is almost impossible. Especially in a such a social and connected field as education. Yet, the traditional mindset and overwhelming amount of day to day responsibilities in the classroom rarely allow educators the time to expand their horizons. Most of us can agree that we live and function in a highly global society, but what does that really look like in the real world? Or at least in our field? I was fortunate enough to find out this past week for class, as my Masters in Instructional Technology cohort collaborated with a class from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Over the course of 3 weeks, we are working in mixed groups with several UNI students and several UMass students to research a specific technology topic and create a video about our topic. The pure fact that three of my group members live in another state, along with the fact that my cohort member lives 2 hours away, poses some logistical challenges to collaboration. However, it also provides a lot of opportunities as well.
The amount of coordination and purposeful collaboration definitely takes effort, but at the same time it allows us to truly focus on being effective. Since we're all working remotely, as a group we have to be clear about the tasks and responsibilities of each member during the "in progress" stage of our project. We had to communicate clearly about when we're meeting, and what we should each have done by that time. Now for the fun part, the awesome technology I get to use! Not only are we using the standard Google Apps for Education, but we're virtually meeting via Zoom, and our final project will be done using WeVideo or Powtoon. In essence, we get to play with new tools and technology, while also researching a relevant topic.
As our project progressed, there were several challenges. Some were unique to our specific assignment, and some were indicative of the same type of issues groups have faced since the invention of groups. One of the big challenges was that we had a person that was definitely not involved in the group work and missed several meetings, this is almost to be expected. I can't really remember working in a group and not having a situation where some version of this problem doesn't occur. In the case of my other group project for a different graduate class, I very much felt like the slacker who didn't carry their weight. But back to collaborating globally, another challenge we faced is that Powtoon (the medium that we ended up using) just didn't allow for simultaneous collaboration, which seemed to defeat the whole purpose of the project. We couldn't, as a group, work on our final video project together. In fact, we couldn't even be logged in from several locations, so we had to be very careful about logging out and letting each other know when we're done with our part, so that our team members could log in and view the progress. Lastly, there seemed to be challenges in having two professors in charge of the project as there were mixed messages in the directions we received and the instructions/feedback our group members across the country were getting. Thankfully, our group had received positive feedback, so there wasn't a lot of revising necessary, but there were challenges with the consistency of message regarding what we actually needed to do.
Overall, the possibility and ability of doing a project such as this, and being able to collaborate with students from another state and time zone was exciting. I learned a lot about collaboration and being very intentional about what we needed to accomplish. It was also interesting to explore the technology and resources that made such a collaboration possible. In general, it was a positive and interesting experience that I personally enjoyed.
The amount of coordination and purposeful collaboration definitely takes effort, but at the same time it allows us to truly focus on being effective. Since we're all working remotely, as a group we have to be clear about the tasks and responsibilities of each member during the "in progress" stage of our project. We had to communicate clearly about when we're meeting, and what we should each have done by that time. Now for the fun part, the awesome technology I get to use! Not only are we using the standard Google Apps for Education, but we're virtually meeting via Zoom, and our final project will be done using WeVideo or Powtoon. In essence, we get to play with new tools and technology, while also researching a relevant topic.
As our project progressed, there were several challenges. Some were unique to our specific assignment, and some were indicative of the same type of issues groups have faced since the invention of groups. One of the big challenges was that we had a person that was definitely not involved in the group work and missed several meetings, this is almost to be expected. I can't really remember working in a group and not having a situation where some version of this problem doesn't occur. In the case of my other group project for a different graduate class, I very much felt like the slacker who didn't carry their weight. But back to collaborating globally, another challenge we faced is that Powtoon (the medium that we ended up using) just didn't allow for simultaneous collaboration, which seemed to defeat the whole purpose of the project. We couldn't, as a group, work on our final video project together. In fact, we couldn't even be logged in from several locations, so we had to be very careful about logging out and letting each other know when we're done with our part, so that our team members could log in and view the progress. Lastly, there seemed to be challenges in having two professors in charge of the project as there were mixed messages in the directions we received and the instructions/feedback our group members across the country were getting. Thankfully, our group had received positive feedback, so there wasn't a lot of revising necessary, but there were challenges with the consistency of message regarding what we actually needed to do.
Overall, the possibility and ability of doing a project such as this, and being able to collaborate with students from another state and time zone was exciting. I learned a lot about collaboration and being very intentional about what we needed to accomplish. It was also interesting to explore the technology and resources that made such a collaboration possible. In general, it was a positive and interesting experience that I personally enjoyed.
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