7th lesson plan 28th February 2007

It is a virtual computer lab because teacher must be on Melt project meeting in Madrid. All students are in computer lab and materials are in Internet (Lemill and del.icio.us)

The goals of the lesson are:
1. develop the skills of using CmapTool functions,
2. understand the concept of mind-map,
3. implement those two in project WBS (Work Breakdown Structure).

Preparation for lesson:
1. Installation of CmapTools software to all computers in computer lab by IT administrator.
2. Creation of short manual of CmapTools in Estonian.
3. Creation of individual exercise for using the CmapTools. The content of exercise is creation of students’ personal map of rolls (not in the project but in the life). The goal is to develop the mind-mapping skills in all students not only in one selected by team. The team work is not enough.
4. Creation of group exercise of project WBS.

Both exercises are graded if the results are published on web. Students must convert the mind-map created by Cmap to image file, input the image in to Google Document and share this document by teacher.

21th February 2007

The lesson is canceled because teacher is on Tiger Leap Foundation 10^th anniversary conference and students are in theatre.

6th lesson report 14th February 2007

I did not saw the project charters before presentations because students sent Google Docks collaboration invitations to wrong email address.

The beginning of lesson was delayed 45 minutes because the Valentines’ day events started earlier than planed and no teacher know about this. Because of delay project client was not represented by school director and class teacher.

The presentations were surprisingly good. This compensates totally the delay of lesson and absence of other teachers. So the task was not very difficult and there was no point to divide learning content in to so many peaces.

First group (school end event) – used Google Docs environment for presentation.
Second group (summer party) – used Google Docs as well but they had two presenters.
Third group (school starting event) – created Power Point presentation additionally to Google Docs materials.

We find out that when Google document is opened in many different computers at same time, it starts to jump on presentation screen during the refresh. It would be wise to close Google document in all other computers during the presentation.

The students were asked to input contact information (phone numbers and e-mail addresses) in to team members list. The goal is to avoid same kind of situations where students are off and we have no idea where they are.

I forgot to collect the information about the project charter creation process. It would be interesting to know do they created this document all together or they separated this task in to sub documents, created them separately and bind them together or they selected one person who created all document alone?

Overall rate to lesson 4 (because of delay).

6th lesson plan 14th February 2007

This lesson is shorter than usually because in the end of the day students have valentines’ day party.

Scope of the lesson:
1. Presentation of project charter to client.
2. Collect additional information and feedback from project client.
3. Develop presentation skills.

The client Audentes School is presented by School manager Luule Vain, class teacher Helju Hansen and project management teacher Martin Sillaots.

During the presentation teams must give overview of project:
1. outcome,
2. goals,
3. problems,
4. ideas,
5. initial schedule.

This was the content of home assignment given on last lesson. Additionally to presentation in classroom they must publish this information in Google Dock environment.

Teams can decide how they present the project charter. They can do this all together or they can select one person who will present the result. Hopefully they create the charter together.

5th lesson report 7th February 2007

In the beginning of lesson we had a lot of technical problems. Annoyingly big amount of computers did not have the Internet connection and students did not have access to learning resources. It takes 15 minutes to solve those problems.

Because of delay I forgot to update the user profile information in del.icio.us environment.

During the lesson occurred, that the learning material is divided too small and too many pieces. It would be better to combine them in to two materials – one learning text (Project Charter that consist information of project problems, ideas, description of final result and scope) and one team assignment (composing of Project Charter).

I changed the schedule of lesson on the run and during the 30 min I give quick overview of Project Charter. When the brake started students began to collect the initial information of project from school management. In second part of lesson they started the Project Charter in teamwork.

In teamwork all groups gathered next to one computer (one computer per group). Two of them worked very intensively. One of the groups falls apart. In this team most of the students did not come back from brake Maybe this is typical Estonian reaction to teamwork. Estonians prefer individual work. This claim is based on my previous experience. So what happened this time? Members who left (the project manager was one of them) seed to those who staid that they have something else important to do and let’s meet in MSN at 9 AM. Those who staid were very unhappy and angry about it. They did not know what to do. I suggested them to start this document and let other continue it later.

Students needed a little help on using the Google Docs. They did not remember how to start the document, save, share and publish it. Even what is the URL of this environment? They did not remember anything. Actually I think they just welt uncomfortable with this new tool. That’s why they asked me to support them on every step they made.

In the end of lesson I had to leave earlier to attend in TLF meeting.

Overall rate to lesson 4-

5th lesson plan 7th February 2007

Scopes:

1. Approving the skills of using the learning tools (del.icio.us and Google Docs).
2. Learning the new topics of Project Management (project problems, ideas, scopes and charter).
3. Practice the work in team and management of team.

 

Tasks and materials:

1. completing of del.icio.us user profiles – presentation of user full name in del.icio.us page.
2. Teamwork 2 – project problems (creation and publication of document in Google Docs environment and tagging in del.icio.us page).
3. Teamwork 3 – overall description of project result (Google Docs + del.icio.us).
4. 
   Reading – ideas for solving the problems and methods for generating the ideas (LeMill + del.icio.us).
5. Teamwork 4 – generation and selection of project ideas (Google Docs + del.icio.us).
6. 
   Reading – project scope (LeMill + del.icio.us).
7. Teamwork 5 – definition of project scope (Google Docs + del.icio.us).
8. 
   Reading – project charter (LeMill + del.icio.us).
9. Teamwork 6 creation of project charter (Google Docs + del.icio.us).

 

Here are many tasks but hopefully students can manage the workflow. Teamwork 6 will contain the results of all previous teamwork (from 1 [list of team members] to 5). Team can work together with every task or they can distribute each task to different team member and work separately.

 

The final formulation of project charter document will be the collaborative home exercise. It must be finished on next lesson (14^th of February 2007). Then the document will be presented to client – to school managers.

 

Ideas:

Why not to show the current blog to students? Maybe they will add some interesting comments. Those remarks can be in Estonian. Just for collecting some instant feedback.

 

One very interesting tool for del.icio.us user network visualization is http://www.twoantennas.com/projects/delicious-network-explorer/. Present this to students.

4th lesson report 31th January 2007

Too much tasks was planed to this lesson. Half of them were skipped. But that’s OK. The learning process was not affected and skipped tasks can be part of next lesson.

Skipped tasks:
1. Editing of the students’ profiles in del.icio.us – stays for next lesson.
2. Students’ networks creation in del.icio.us – the network was already built by students.
3. Exercise of definition of project problems – it is deleted from del.icio.us and will presented again for next lesson.

The tagging mistake is corrected. Still 3 students out of 13 don’t add tags or input separated words as one tag. Del.icio.us counts them as separated tags. Separator of tags is space.

Teams
The formulation of project team was taking place IRL. This process was a bit clumsy but still very interesting. It appeared that one of the elected project managers (X) was missing, and students started to fight against here. Probably X was afraid to visit the class.

What was the problem?
Students claimed that X was lobbing them to give their votes to here. It was previously none that other student (Y) wanted to become a project manager of same project (school end party). On Election Day Y was missing and students elected X to school end party manager and Y was elected to school start party project manager. Now they decided that this is wrong and X can’t be the project manager. They agreed that Y is the manager of school end party.

So the school start party project was with out project manager. I decided that student who collected second amount of votes will become a project manager. Two students shared second place, but one of them (W) was missing. One of them (Z) started to form the team. During the selection of team members appeared that most of the selected students did not wanted to work with him. Z is a boy, but most of the students are girls. Maybe this was the problem. But I did not let them to form the team only from bois. Z decided not to be the project manager. The school start party project manager was still needed.

Finally we went back to W who was missing. I asked, is there in the class any friend of W? V said that she’s a friend of W. I asked, is V ready to form the team for here? She agreed and the formulation of teams started.

Bloody soap opera! )

The process of team formulation:
1. At first the project manager (V), who collected the smallest amount of votes selected member to here team. She was first because I wanted the less popular (maybe also weakest) project manager to have strongest coworker.
2. Secondly the project manager (Y) who collected second amount of votes selected a team member from class students.
3. Thirdly the most popular project manager was making here chouse.

This process continued until all students were separated in to three groups. I was making the notes in to my computer who is selected in to what team and who is still free. In the end there was a bit inconvenient moment – nobody wanted to select last students. I decided that last two will join with summer party team because it’s the most difficult project and it needs more staff. It’s good to be a teacher and act like a God. )

From other hand it would be nice to present my notes about team formulation on screen. In this way students can see who is selected and who is left. From other hand maybe it would be embarrassing to them who are left to the end.
Document creation in docs.google.com
Some of students already had Google Docs account. Probably they have gmail account. Some of them didn’t finish the account registration. The account confirmation was sent to them by e-mail. In this e-mail there is a link where user must click to confirm the account creation. Some of the students were not able to read that e-mail because they did not remember the password of e-mail web client. This password is usually stored in user computer and at home they login automatically. I asked them to register Google Docs account at home. I’m not sure that they will.

The process of creation of document:
1. Each team collected together next to one computer (3 different groups).
2. They selected CIO who started the document (3 different CIO).
3. Based on my suggestions CIO typed the title of document.
4. CIO created the list of team members. Other students helped here to do that (they memorized the names of missing students).
5. CIO saved the document and shared it with team members (team members typed in there e-mail addresses).
6. Team members went back to there PCs and opened the shared document. They selected here names and typed in the rolls or responsibilities that they would like to have in this project.
7. CIO published the document.
8. CIO tagged this document on here del.icio.us page.
9. All members copied this bookmark to there personal del.icio.us page.

There were some technical problems because some of the students were enable to activate Google account. They continued the work with CIO. One of teams had management problems. They did not know how to share responsibilities. I explained that they can change the rolls later.
Software development idea: It would be nice to have complete list of course materials. Then students can see, what will happen on next lesson. Today I don’t have this list because I create materials on the run. On the other hand it’s very convenient, that del.icio.us starting page shows the content of today’s lesson. Maybe it is good to have two different interfaces – the course view and the lesson view. Now the course view is in LeMill and lesson view on del.icio.us. It would be also nice when the first task of lesson is in the top of del.icio.us page. Currently the chronological ascending and descending sorting is not enough.

Conclusion: The class was busy and they seamed to like the Google Docks (I asked). Nobody was complaining: “Why new software again?”

Overall rate to lesson 5-