Project Work Shouldn't Stop Spring Training Play

I was really nervous going into this curriculum unit because I had never actually written a formal unit before, but it turned out to be a really fun and rewarding experience.  I learned a lot from both the process and from my partner who has more real-world teaching experience than I do.  What more could you ask for?  My partner and I started out by brainstorming ideas individually.  We drafted ideas and noted useful and interesting resources in a wiki we created for our course before coming together over a skype call.  It is always good to put a voice and face to a username that you have been "talking" to for the duration of the course.  I still don't love wiki's because of their loose structure and organization, but it worked well in our case because there were just two of us.  I am sure we would have run into more problems if we had had four people in our group.  Using a new wiki platform got me thinking about how many different "free" services there are out there for the same need.

Out of this call, we were able to take our loose ideas and develop a coherent action plan that we used to divide the work.  Sometimes we would divide work on clear boundaries, while other times we would provide support for work that the other was working on.  For example, I might write some prose, but leave a place holder where an appropriate reference or example should be.  My partner would insert the missing element whenever he could.  What was interesting about this approach was that it worked without explicit direction.  I didn't have to tell him to fill in the blank, it was just part of our workflow.  If I couldn't fill it in off the bat, he would take a shot at it, before I returned to it and invested more time in filling it in.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, how many is the spoken word worth?  I think we spoke synchronously three or four times.  We used these times to power through outstanding questions and comments.  There are definite efficiencies gained through synchronous work.  While we emailed a few times for the purpose of coordinating our synchronous talks, most of our asynchronous communication actually happened directly in the wiki.  We had a list of comments and questions that would expand and contract as the project moved forward.

Working remotely was great!  We got our work done over great distance without having to sacrifice other activities for face-to-face interactions that I don't think would have made us any more efficient. In fact, the biggest con of working remotely was that it gave us the ability to work on our project while on vacation!!!!  Is this good or bad?  It depends on whom you ask.  I think we worked on our project from a total of four states and were physically closer on vacation than we are when "in class."  You've got to love technology when the biggest issue is having to schedule work around spring training baseball, family beach time, and TC vacations.

I also think who you work with makes a big difference when collaborating remotely and I didn't have any issues there.  I only have great things to say about my project partner and am happy with what we produced together.

Side notes:

• The transition to the new moodle server is still puzzling me.  Am I on it?  I am not getting any notifications from test posts and I don't see anyone else on yet.
• If you have iTunes, it is interesting to see how Florida Virtual School is using it - http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/inFlorida.edu

I am a die hard yankee fan, but my son loves Wally the Green Monster...