I always find it very informative when working with peers on an assignment. Naturally we all come to an assignment with different backgrounds, educational history and life experience. It is through projects like this, which force us to learn more about each other that our perspective on topics can often change. For this particular assignment I chose to evaluate WordPress as a possible online learning platform. I chose it for a number of reasons, one of them being that my district supports WordPress and hosts WordPress sites on our intranet. Because of this, I am somewhat familiar with this platform, but would also like to use more inclusively in my teaching practice. Through discussions within my group I became aware that many people actually find WordPress cumbersome and not as user friendly as other platforms like Weebly for instance. I personally had never considered using Weebly in my classroom, but think that I should at least consider it.
Any time a group of individuals is working together on a project there are certain difficulties that arise. In my experience within this program the same set of difficulties is present in every group. Since we are all professionals, with work, family and other commitments coordinating time to work on a group project is always an issue. Add in working with individuals from multiple time zones and synchronous communication may not always be possible. Through this I have learned that even though completing a project through asynchronous communication may take additional time and effort, it is entirely possible.
It was great working with you on this project, Anita!
As you mention, it was certainly a valuable experience collaborating with this group, as we all brought different perspectives and experience to this project. I was also familiar with WordPress before, however, after hearing the different opinions, experiences, and critiques, I feel that I am much more knowledgable and equipped to use this LMS in the future if I choose to.
Good luck with the rest of the term!
Karina
Hi Anita,
I hear what you are saying about the difficulties with time zones etc. It was really a challenge trying to find a mutually convenient time to meet for everyone. Having said that, sometimes when that happens there can sometimes be a disconnect in the group but I didn’t find that with ours. We all wanted to contribute and we all spent considerable time and effort to produce an excellent paper. And I also learned a lot about WordPress in the process as well. Good luck with the rest of the course.
Cheers,
Brenda