Assignment 1b thoughts

Assignment 1b submitted - not the greatest of jobs but with my husband having some surgery and not able to deal much with the kids and then getting violently ill took about a week out of my time, then my son getting ill, getting better and going in for dental surgery, this took another 4 days out and then having to look after him when he was out. So all in all I think I had around 4 days before the due date to work on the assignment. As long as I pass I think I will be happy for this assignment. Now to focus on the next one - but first I really want to spend some time on the readings that are in the unit. I feel like I have missed some points about the main thrust of the articles and the unit and want to relook and write something about them. A little time consuming but it has to be done. I do have Saturday to do some work, my wonderful husband is taking the kids to his mother's for the night (although there is an ulterior motive there - he is going to a concert!) so even though I won't wake up with my son on his birthday on Sunday I will have some time to work on my studies for a day. Then Sunday morning I will get everything ready for his party!

I found the self assessment interesting to look at and to try and focus it on myself, I wonder if it would have been worth it to do a group assessment too? Not sure, it is easy to be critical of others in the group but hard for you to look at yourself and critique your participation and work load. The annotated bibliography was fine but the word limit was a concern to try and convey an appropriate evaluation of the work. Oh well on to looking at the articles now.

Group collaboration

What an interesting and vibrant aspect to an assignment - group work across distance and sometimes time! The first thought was how was this going to work, where the other group members as keen as me? And all the other thoughts that go with working in groups - I remember a number of times hearing and reading that working in groups is the hardest aspect to master, we as teachers love kids working in groups but when we are asked to work in groups in fills us with dread! It is hard to give up the control that is inherent in any person who makes their own decisions, responsible for their own marks, now they are responsible for others and have to come to agreement with other people. Maybe it is a fear that our views are not worthwhile or there will be criticism or maybe it is that fact that we think we know best and others can not know more than we do???

But what I found was that my group were as keen as I was, as eager to trial new ways of working together and that we worked well together. My only criticism would be the ease at which we found ourselves off track and the need to bring us back onto topic. Which allows my thoughts to drift to my EO talking about the construction of video games and the market at which they aimed - there was a need to try and pull in the female market and they wondered how to do that - they found it through social networking - online gaming and suddenly their games increased in sales, even war games because it was the ability to get online and talk that drew the people not the game itself. I found myself reminded of this a number of occasions during out Skype sessions. Oh how I love Skype! If every one were on Skype I could throw out my phone I think!

Another quick note - a lesson on academic and professional was learned - academic = peer reviewed; professional = not as an easy statement.