Thoughts on the Youth Project Collaboration

While we are still not quite finished with the project, I wanted to post my thoughts on the final and the group collaboration, particularly in relation to how well we worked together. 

First, some background on why this final project initially appealed to me: I was interested in being a part of the idea that Michael proposed because of the great experience I had in Josephine and Jason Pine's Social Marketing class over the summer. The project I was involved with in that program was focused on assisting two organizations, Globalhood and YouthVenture, with preparing youths for a developmental excursion to the Dominican Republic. Essentially, we developed tools and a programs to enable the youths as ethnographers and research reporters during their trip to the DR.

Michael and I were initial skype partners and started discussing his idea back then. The idea presented an opportunity for me to think more specifically about how youths can learn online but also contribute using social networked environments. 

Michael has been a very organized team leader. He established the structure of our wiki as well as our working blog. These made working on this project very easy from a posting and logistical perspective.

Our group meetings were mostly in Second Life, complemented by frequent correspondences via email. 

Anja is also in the Lasting Presence Group project with me so it was interesting to see how one group allowed us to be more familiarized with one another's work style for the other group. 

Overall, through developing lesson plans for teens in Michael's "Circle" model, I learned a good amount. I not only learned how to write a lesson plan (a new feat for me), but I also learned how to work in sync with another person's creative process and idea pool.