11th lesson report 4th April 2007

Starting from this point lesson plans and reports are posted as one entry.

Scope of the lesson was creation of project time plans in teamwork:

1. time plan for event preparation in MS Project environment,
2. event schedule in freely selected environment.

Because duration units for preparation and event are different, schedules must create and stored in different Google Docs files. It was suggested that team will share the workload – one subgroup creates the schedule for preparation period, other for event. Some of the groups worked in this way, some don’t:

In the team of the 1th September event one team member sit behind the computer and created both of the schedules. Other members sit behind his back and did … It’s not clear what they did. I should check. This team had lot of problems with using the MS Project. All members were missing from last lesson. They did not know what to do with MS Project. The schedule (timetable) of event was OK because they created this in Spreadsheet environment. The Gantt chart of the preparation tasks was lousy. Idea: MS Project and other specific software programs must be introduced in different lessons and with different exercises.

In the team of the summer party project 2 students sit behind the same computer and created both of the time plans. What did the rest of the group I don’t know. I’m sure, they did not play games but did they share ideas. I wonder how less I care about the creation process! Why I’m mostly interested if results? I should change this. Idea: observe the creation process in team.

Both of the schedules were created in MS Project. The quality of event was very high. They even asked and implemented solutions that we did not studied in last lesson. The quality of preparation period is not so high because team was running out of time.

In the school graduation event project team the workload was shared. The two of them – the most clever ones – started with event schedule. Then they delegated the task to other members of this team and continued with preparation period schedule. The quality of both schedules is high.

Team complained that some of the team members (Tanel Erik, Aadu, Kristella) do nothing. They even don’t visit the lessons. I must contact with them.

For conclusion this lesson was quite OK. All the teams worked as they wanted and desired documents were created. Although this time the quality of results varies and the grades are different from team to team. If team finished the task earlier they were allowed to leave from the classroom.

Overall rate for lesson 5.

10th lesson report 28th March 2007

The creation of long material in Lemill was very clumsy task.

1. It was not possible to copy text from existing MS Word file directly to Lemill text area because Lemill remembers the format of original document. Usually it does not fit with new structure of new text. For cleaning the format at first the text was pasted to Notepad and copied from Notepad and finally pasted to Lemill.
2. Images that were previously copied directly to Word document can’t inserted directly to the Lemill. They must be stored as separated image files and then uploaded one by one to Lemill.
3. In this Lemill development phase it’s not possible to create tables, but time planning subject is more or less only tables. Tables must be stored as images and uploaded to Lemill. The additional problem was coping text tables to Irfan View. The quality of image was very pore. For improving the quality of table images they were copied at first to spreadsheet environment and then to graphical design environment.

The review of created MS Project user manual is needed, because the decreasing of content the numbers of illustrations are not in increasing order.

The lesson was successful. The interest and activity of students was high. Maybe because the selected example – creation of team assignment time plan – was interesting end relevant to them. Although it was seen all the time, that MS Project is complicated and not known environment to them. The need assistants all the time and I reduced the scope of lesson.

Topics that were covered:

1. creation of outline task list,
2. management of task list – hiding of subtasks, reordering the tasks, deleting the tasks,
3. estimation of task durations,
4. creation of relationships in Gantt chart,
5. management of relationships – deleting and adding lag,
6. adding the task constraints – fixed starting date (this was not planed),
7. changing of the project start,
8. creation of the resources list,
9. assigning the resources to tasks,
10. changing the working time – adding the holidays (this was to much, skip next time),
11. leveling the resources (this was to much, skip next time).

Topics that were not covered (lack of time or to complicated):

1. different duration units,
2. critical path,
3. reassigning the resources,
4. planning the cost of materials and people.

Based on this information it’s recommended to reduce the content of MS Project manual in Lemill – create copy of existing material and kick out all topics that are not very important to secondary school students.

Using Print Screen button for image creation was first experience for most of the students. This task was completed very slowly and painfully. But in the end of lesson 7 students form 9 succeeded with image upload to Google Docs. 2 of them did not managed to finish the Google Docs user account verification. They did not had access to mailbox were the verification letter was sent.

The second problem with publishing documents in Google Docs was identification of student names. Only 3 students out of 7 are surely identified. They had Google user accounts relatively same as are their real names and one used same user name as in del.icio.us. 4 others had fiction names e.g. Shrimp Soup, Psycho Bitch Barbie, Club Tropicana, Southside Queens :). So what can you do? Who will earn the grade? Some of the real names can be identified in from the created documents – the resource names in cant chart. Most likely the first name in the file is name of the author but this is not 100% sure.

Software development idea: for communication in community networks user can select what ever nickname they want, but in registration or the exact real name is asked. Personal name and e-mail address are only mandatory fields. Teacher has rights to check the student profiles. In this case the software is not so social anymore but what can you do? Teacher is also human and not the excrescence who can read the students mind. 

All the time (90 minutes) was spent for personal Exercise. We did not start the team work. This was suggested as home task but unlikely they start it at home. So next lesson will spent for MS project again. This is OK. Students can have deeper experience with new software.

Overall rate for lesson 5.

10th lesson plan 28th March 2007

Computer lab for MS Project
The scope of the lesson is practice most important functionalities in MS Project time and resource planning software.

Most important MS Project functionalities are:
1. creation of outline task list,
2. estimation duration of tasks,
3. defining relations between tasks,
4. critical path of the project,*
5. assignment of resources,
6. resource leveling.

Lesson activities:
1. Teacher’s presentation – creation of simple time plan. The example is time plane for team home task.
2. Guided personal exercise – at the same time with teacher’s presentation students create same time plan in their personal computers. Finished time plan is published in Google Docs and graded by teacher.
3. Teamwork – creation of project time plan in teams. Teamwork can be finished at home. *

Before lesson following learning materials are created in Lemill environment:
1. User guide of MS Project. The basis for this document is MS Project user guide created previously for vocational training. The content of new user manual must be hardly reduced (only one example and most important functions). The new manual should contain URL to MS Project demo version.
2. Instruction for teamwork. It must contain instructions for converting MS Project Gantt chart to image file because MS Project does not have automatic image saving function and Google Docs does not support MS Project files. Some simple graphical design software must be introduced (e.g. Irfan View)*

21th March 2007 school break

school break

9th lesson report 14th March 2007

Lesson was running as planed.

 

We synchronized the del.icio.us user names and students’ real names. Now all students in the class have accounts in del.icio.us. I took so long time – 2 months L. Mostly the reason is my absents and virtual lessons.

 

We repeated the grading rules and methods and corrected the tagging errors. It seams that they got it. I was surprised that they did not start to argue against the assessment rules. Those rules are new and unusual. Maybe they like that. I should ask feedback from them. Evaluation idea: create feedback questionnaire, and ask how they like learning content, materials, tools and assessment rules and methods. This evaluation form must be e-formular and students can earn some extra points by filling in the questionnaire.

 

The concept map exercise was successful. Students created very nice maps (e.g. http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg9qq2v4_1cc9vt5). CmapTools is excellent software.

 

The biggest problem was upload of maps to the Google Docs environment. At first map must be saved as image. Some of the students did not get it. Software development idea: it would be nice to have uploading function that converts files to images automatically. Upload file as image. So when students upload Cmap file to Google Docs, it converts this to image automatically.

 

The second problem was the size of the map inside of the Google Doc. User can use Upload function directly from Google Docs file management list. Then the image new document is created and image is inserted automatically but the system does not ask the new dimension of image. It has default (very large) size. Better solution is Image – Insert function inside of document. Then the system let users to define the width and the height of the image. This was also to complicated task for some students. Most of the students succeeded with uploading there personal maps (5 students + 2 from last lesson out of 10 who were present this time). All teams finished the WBS.

 

Students seam to like the concept map method. Research questions: Interesting do they like it more than tagcloud method? Do different students prefer different methods?

 

Teaching of new method is necessary – concept maps created by students during my presentation have better quality than those that are created at home as result of individual work.

 

We did not have time to start with MS Project.

 

Some students had nothing to do in the computer lab because they already created the maps at home. Most of the students worked hard until the end of the lesson. Some of them did not upload the map in to Google Docs because they still have not activated there Google user account (they did not had access to verification letter).

 

Overall rating to lesson 5.

9th lesson plan 14th March 2007

Ordinary computer lab. Teacher is available.

The goal of the lesson is to correct tagging mistakes and develop CmapTools user skills.

Activities in lesson:

1. For correcting the tagging mistakes the tags and the tag-clouds are projected to the wall and commented by teacher.
2. Repeating of the grading methods. One important grade will be earned in the end of the course by explaining the student’s personal tag-cloud.
3. Presentation and training the CmapTools functionalities. Teacher is presenting the creation of example mind map on the wall and students are doing the same in their computers.
4. Teams, who haven’t created the project WBS jet, start this task. The result must be published in Google Docks environment.

If there is still time we can start with MS Project.

8th lesson report 7th March 2007

Virtual lesson.

All content was tagged. Some tagging errors are started to repeat:

1. tags with 0 content,
2. in tag area is one long sentence – the tagcloud is total mess,
3. only one tag per bookmark – the description of content is not enough,
4. two words are supposed to be one tag, but the del.icio.us environment count them as two different tags,
5. using word “etcetera” as a tag,
6. some other pointless tags.

The number of taggers is surprisingly low (only 5 students out of 19). Still some usernames are not known to me.

On next lesson it’s important to identify unknown users and to correct tagging errors. For this reason the grading methods and rules must be repeated:

1. Final examination is based on personal tagcloud.
2. student must explain the meaning of s/his tags.
3. Some questions are asked about project management content. User can answer to questions using the tagcloud as helping tool.

Two students presented personal mind map. Actually they did that at home. Good! And because they are members of same project team, this group presented the WBS of project. WERY GOOD! So CmapTools is functioning well enough J.

Mind maps created by students were unexpectedly good. Some mistakes:

1. Relations were without names. They even did not changed the default value of link – “????”.
2. Some nodes had only one sub-node (if there is only one sub-node, then it is wise to rename the parent node and delete the sub-node).
3. Not reasonable layout of some nodes. Nodes with similar meaning should be near to each other.
4. Images (copies of maps) in Google Docs are too large (height and width).

Some suggestions shod make on next lesson.

Overall rate of lesson 5.

8th lesson plan 7th March 2007

Lesson is virtual because teacher is in Calibrate project meeting in
Prague.

Based on last lesson bad experience this time it was not planed to use new and not known software. Still it was stressful to know that students did not use the software although it was functioning properly. That’s why one exercise form last lesson is repeated in this lesson – the creation of personal mind map. For those who will manage with this task one bonus grade (double grade) is available.

The scope of the lesson is to learn project quality and time planning methods. Also to try again CmapTools software for mind map generation.

For reading and tagging the following materials are grated in Lemill:

1. Text of project quality management
2. Teamwork of planning the project quality – What are the important criteria of quality? What goals must be achieved to claim that the project result quality is high?
3. Text of project time planning methods and major steps.

The result of teamwork must be published in Google Docks. All team members will gain same grade if the teacher has access to the quality document. Documents created by students must be tagged in del.icio.us.

7th lesson report 28th February 2007

Lesson was unsuccessful. Students did not started work with new software CmapTools. It’s not clear why? Maybe was it technical problem, laziness or lack of knowledge. Probably is the main reason unexpected interface of CmapTools software. Application opens in 2 separated windows – one for file management other for authoring. Students were probably confused by file management window. One of the students sent e-mail where she claimed that software was asking some folder of file, and did not run. This was probably file management window and it wasn’t asking any file or folder. I wonder why they did not even try. The abnormality of CmapTools interface was clearly explained in user instruction. The main reason is still laziness – students didn’t red the instructions.

 

Students red ant tagged only the text materials but did not solve the exercises. The reason for not starting the exercises was not the technical problem. Two days later I visited the computer lab and checked the correctness of software functions under the teacher’s and student’s user name.

 

Overall rate to lesson 2.

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.