Group Leadership Final Project

PD Tutorial Tool

For the PD tutorial our group decided to use Google Presentation. Google seemed to work best overall for our group. We used Google+ Hangout for our live meetings. We liked we could talk in real time and also work on assignments. Since we had already used a Google Doc to communicate, it made perfect sense to keep that going. When we were deciding on our group final presentation, we wanted it to be something each person could use easily. Since we were all familiar with Google products and could pull those into Google Hangout, it made the most sense. We decided to create a Google presentation because we could all work on it simultaneously and talk through what we wanted to include. Since we were covering Google Forms, Spreadsheets, and Presentation it was logical to embrace Google. We each took one of the elements and dug into it. Jing and Screencast-o-matic worked best for recording our Google Presentation and talking through the presentation. That way we were all able to get our point across, but still make it cohesive.

 Learning Curve

I learned several important things during the project. One thing is that it was very helpful to have a live place to see and hear my group members. When I did group projects in earlier classes, we just used
Skype to talk or used the chat feature. Google Hangout allowed us to do all of these elements which helped a lot. I also learned it was important to set deadlines and goals for our group. We had the class deadlines, but it was nice to make our own. When we worked on our Google Presentation, it became clear we all had different ideas of what resources needed to be utilized and how the final presentation should look. We had a general understanding, but approached it in different ways. It was important to be considerate and professional when working together. Overall, I learned a lot about working in a group and what aspects need to be considering when making a professional development tool for others.


Adaptations:

Overall, I think we did a good job working together and completing the group project. We had some set backs with the actual recording. It was hard to make one cohesive video when we were all in different places. We were going to have one person do it, but that seemed like a lot of work for someone. So instead we broke it down into three parts and each took a section. We used Jing to record each of our sections and then wanted to put them together. Unfortunately Jing doesn't download into an MP4, so we had to adjust. Eventually we put the video together and got it to work effectively. Next time, I would like to find something that is free and works for recording a longer video.