The most trying part of collaboration is simply the schedule of all of the collaborators in the group. My group is made up of Carl, Shannon Frazier, and Jose. We communicate via text messaging for the most part. Shannon and myself have struggled the most with understanding the ins and outs of the technology and understanding the expectation. We have also shared a phone call to work out some of the more confusing elements. Carl and Jose are much more comfortable with the technology aspect and have offered us both some much needed help.
I have initiated contact with the group every week to make sure everyone is on task and offer feedback for assignments. Although I don't think I could initiate more, I certainly could be giving more feedback on assignments. I could be completely off base but it feels like others in my group may feel like I do, a combination of everyone being a little intimidated of their work and really just having such terrible schedules that some assignments come down to the minute. I have revised every assignment based on feedback.
I have attended all of the sessions, watched all the videos, read all the content and contributed to all the discussions in a timely manner and have circled back several times to each board to see if anyone else had posted that I could offer any feedback or glean anything else from the readings from others perspectives. I typically read every post even if I do not comment. Such breadth of education offers differing perspectives in some areas.
I still feel that I have much more to uncover to be a true contributor that will help others. I didn't cite any research directly and I struggled doing this last semester also even though I read quite a few things.
There are some extremely wise and intuitive educators in this course and I have learned and appreciated many of the comments on the discussion board, I just wish there were more. I still feel like I am leveling up in my understanding of both technology and simply the theory of teaching. I came to education by way of a technical program so I didn't learn much about theory like traditional educators do. It has been very eye-opening in a good way and I am very excited to continue this new growth mindset.
It has also been eye-opening that the desire to do quality work is at a completely different level when it is made so relevant to our own understanding. The COVA approach is long overdue and a game-changer for me even in the infancy of this program for me.
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