Production Tools Reflection

Group organization has a infinite number of ways to be done successfully. The best way, however, to organize a group will be one that holds each member responsible for participation and works with each member's strengths and weaknesses.

The roles of technology operator, editor, team liason, and idea generator piqued my interest. I liked the idea of technology operator assigned as a role as that is the role of most controversy. Either kids really, really want to work with the technology or they really, really don't, claiming they will either break it or they have no idea what they are doing. Assigning this role in a group and rotating it, would indeed work with the strengths of some, and the weaknesses of others. Ultimately, being in this role will either be the students most enjoyable part of the production process, or it will have the most learning value for the student.

I thought the editor, was also interesting, as I'm not sure I've seen that role assigned before. I wonder if all students could successfully carry out the role of the editor. Filling out the team reports would probably be doable with the appropriate human support. And, I suppose editing and/or revising would be, too, with the appropriate technology support. Within reason, a student could edit and revise the groups work with a spell/grammar check tool within the software the group is using for that stage of the process, or, the editor could copy/paste the text into a word processor that had a spell/grammar check available.

In addition, I appreciated the checklist and teamwork report given in this chapter. I have seen this type of check list recently. The Language Arts teacher is using a check list to help her students through the writing and revising process of producing a persuasive essay. The kids have been pretty independent learners in the persuasive essay project, I think in part due to the scaffolding the check list and other stage guides the LA teacher is using.

The team report, to start off with, has a much better name that group reflection, or participation evaluation, yet that's exactly what it is. Because it seems so official, I think kids are more likely to take it seriously.

This chapter has offered a good overview of what it takes to successfully pull off a complex, long term project for kids of any age. In the future, not only will I consider the role of technology operator, with the mini-lessons and the idea of cascading learning, (I always wondered how to incorporate the technology training portion of the project...it always seems be something that got in the way of the content), but I will use the term 'Team Report' when asking students for a group participation evaluation.