Our unit is complete and I am very pleased with how it turned out and how the collaboration process went. I was a bit apprehensive at the beginning of the collaboration process because I would be doing it mostly online with Mary. We were fortunate to have a few times over the course of the semester when we were able to work together in person and these times proved to be very valuable for our unit. We worked best when we were together in person or on the phone rather than through e-mail. I think this is because we could quickly bounce ideas off of each other and get immediate feedback about our different ideas. If this had been a real situation, I think making weekly meetings with the teacher would prove to be valuable rather than communicating completely or mostly through e-mail.
I think this was an excellent process to go through as a graduate student because I feel like I have now had a collaborative experience and my first one won't be at my first job. I feel as though I could use the wiki and unit we created as part of a portfolio for a job interview and it would help a lot. I do wish that I could help to implement the unit Mary and I created, but I know I will hear about it as she does it at the end of this school year. She did share it with the other third grade teacher at her school and she was very excited to teach it for the first time this year and see the changes that were made to improve it.
As the LMS partner in this collaboration, I feel as though I did my job to help Mary enhance her unit with different resources, technology ideas, and ways to communicate what is being taught in her classroom. I feel as though her students will have a greater understanding of folktales and also be able to gain some technology skills in the process. I'm looking forward to repeating this process with other teachers in the future.
I am eager to review in depth the units of the others in the class. I think that every collaboration experience will be different because every teacher and unit is unique. I am interested to see how others went about the process and what things they did to enhance a teacher's unit.
Well done Beth. It's been a pleasure having you in class. It has been a learning curve for most of the class (including me) in using the wiki but you took it on with seeming ease. I agree that face-to-face collaboration is much more fluid. Yet, I hadn't considered that this wiki assignment would be a good way to showcase your skills to potential employers!
ReplyDeleteProf.K.