blog 9

In my future classroom I think I would use group work for project based learning. I think the students can draw on each other's strengths and weaknesses to learn new things. I think I would also use group work for labs. I think depending on how the groups are functioning it would be of a lot of value to students. Group work teaches responsibility and communication skills. I think it's a necessary tool to be able to work with others. Group work seems like it would be difficult to grade. I think a good way would be to have a list of responsibilities laid out (who's doing what, etc) and see how much work that student put into the assignment, if they even completed the assignment.

blog 8

Now that our unit plans are coming to a close I can say that using technology to work with other group members was a positive thing. I think it made it a lot easier. We did our unit in Google docs. I liked how we were able to see what was happening and the professor could see how much each person contributed. The technology aspect did make it a lot easier than having to meet in person when people may not be available at the same times or be inconvenienced. I also like how all group members were able to see comments the professor and other people made instead of just one person being able to see comments made, as would be the case if the unit designs were done in paper format. Every group member could be working at the same time; I think this is a good thing.
Something I might do differently when working in another group is make a list of responsibilities from the beginning. We started doing this towards the end of this assignment but I would like to incorporate it earlier. Sometimes people are unaware of what's going on, we don't know who's supposed to do what, but if we have a clear list of responsibilities we have a better chance of everyone being on the same page. Communicating a little better is probably a good idea too.