One of my favorite aspects of COETAIL is the collaborative spirit of its participants, and we finally get to put that to work with this project. For our final project, after 6 weeks of work, I luckily ended up with an amazing team that basically put the whole project together on their own. The members of the team for the “Hi 5! Resources” project are Simona, Julija, Christel, Mooney, and me (Luis Carlos).
How did you find your group for this project?
My group actually found me. Joel told me I could get in contact with Christel, but after an email I got from Simona, I was absorbed into a bigger group.
How did the collaboration aspect of this project go? What challenges did you face?
Even though our communication started via email, it eventually migrated to Twitter. I accepted the group invite, but forgot to activate notifications to receive emails when somebody sent a message. I found out at the end, when most team members had already finished their projects (lesson learned). As the end of the academic year approaches at my school, and after almost three months of online learning, my tasks as EdTech Coordinator have widely expanded. Next year we will be implementing Google Classroom as our new MS LMS, replacing Canvas, so this implies piloting, gathering feedback, and tons of training. I homeschool (online for now) two boys in the afternoons and for most of the day on weekends, so there was little extra time for me to catch up with the group.
How did you overcome them? How was this collaborative planning experience different from or similar to other planning experiences?
My group was very supportive, and I know there will be more opportunities to work together and get to know each other better. I wish I could have participated and interacted more with the rest of the team, but the circumstances didn’t help me. I appreciate that even though they needed my contribution, I never felt like they were demanding it (I haven’t read the Twitter thread yet, so maybe they did, haha). To overcome the lack of time, I spent 3 days in a row reading and writing posts almost non-stop.
This experience was similar to other professional development experiences in which I collaborated with people from all over the world and with different areas of expertise. It was also fairly unique, as on this occasion I wasn’t working with them in the same room.
Why did you choose this option? These standards?
When I started Course 2, I had different ideas for the project. I wanted to update the Social Media policies at my school, put together a filterable database of resources for online learning, or improve a lesson plan with a colleague. My teammates were diligent and chose a project that made it easy for everybody to contribute their expertise.
How was this learning experience different from or similar to other learning experiences you have designed?
I haven’t facilitated this experience yet, but as soon as I do (this week), I will update this post to let you know how it went.
Here I share a link to the Google Slides with the training I am offering on Google Classroom.
First published on my COETAIL blog on 1 June 2020, lightly edited for this site. Read the archived original.