Evaluation

[Jess]

During the horizon project many aspects of grassroots video were explored such as the impact grassroots video has on education, politics, heath and entertainment. The social and ethical issues that are related to grassroots video were not covered in this project. However as a project manager I felt that the project its self had social and ethical issues, this is not necessarily a bad thing and is to be expected when conducting a project that includes students from all over the world. I found that the project was a great way to interact with people from different cultures and learn about peoples different ethical backgrounds as there was complete freedom within the topics chosen in the project. For example I had one girl Yume from Japan in the impact on government, politics and employment group who wanted to focus on how china had banned YouTube to prevent knowledge of the Tibet crisis spreading across the globe. I thought that this was a great opportunity within the project to broaden knowledge of current events with students from different continents. To discus the full social issues related to this topic would mean writing an essay as the entire project revolves around being social, learning to work with and except people of different culture, race and religion and being able to co-operate and compromise with new people. To be involved in this project you have to be a risk taker as you do not know who you will be working with. One of the social issues that I did not experience but that could occur in this project is the language barrier. As not everyone’s first language is the same there could be communication problems or misunderstandings which would lead to social issues. I found that it was very important to stay social with my whole team. As project manager I found if a member didn’t stay in touch with at least me but their team as well they would fall behind. With out being social in this project there would be no way of collaborating. I think the way this project is conducted is a great way to allow everyone a chance to have input, for someone who is not comfortable working in groups with people in their class or for someone meeting new people it helps them to meet new people and socialize with people out side of their circle and they can be themselves with out feeling so exposed. I really liked how this project gave the opportunity for everyone to alter each others work to create the best piece of work possible. Improvements I would like to see for this project are the social timing worked out better. I understand that its hard to combine times for everyone with all the different holidays but that time at the start of the project was the foundations for the entire project, I feel that I worked better with the people in my group who I socialized with at the start than with those who came in later because by that stage the project was in full swing and I didn’t have time to get to know the people. For me this was a great disappointment because one of those people was my assistant manager and not only as a person she seemed really cool but I think we would have made a much better team if we had had the opportunity to socialize. I really enjoyed the project but one thing that confused me a little was at the start we were encouraged to use and socialize on the ning but when we moved to the wiki we were expected to discuss on the wiki but some people were still using the wiki which caused communication to be lost. Personally I found the ning much more appropriate and helpful to use than the wiki.
I though creating the videos was a great was to show how much we knew about our project but I also found it very stressful. I liked being able to approach others for information to combine it with my own ideas to make and interesting clip. I think the main problem that many people struggled with was the time constrictions. We only had two classes a week and the amount of work I was doing for that class was fit for a four day a week class. As much as I enjoyed the video making process as a part of the project and I think I have learnt a lot from completing the entire project I think it was very overwhelming and I great expectation of the students for the work load the project required.
The conclusion of this project was a great way to finish. Using eluminate was very fun for my entire class and having the opportunity to reflect vocally to the other teachers involved in the project and have their instant feedback was awesome. Over all I found this project challenging, creative, interesting and most of all enjoyable. I would love to be involved in something like this again.
Grassroots Video main wiki page
My horizon page
My Video

[Julie Lindsay]

Thanks Jess, I really enjoyed reading your comments. Now that you are such a professional at online learning you will find it much easier for the next project you do. You have a mature insight into some of the issues to do with this mode of learning. What we are doing is quite cutting edge in some respects and demands a lot of time and effort. You did a great job as a PM! Well done.