I realized today that we are in one of those phases when we have several projects going on at once and some of them started so long ago that we are dealing with 3 layers of groups right now. What the heck do I mean?
Well, my students work in cooperative groups a lot. They sit at tables in groups of four that we change every quarter. I used to change the groups very often, but I found that the population of students we have will not always buy into cooperating if they know they will change groups in a week or two. So now I keep them in a group for 10 weeks at a time and It has worked well. We started a blog video project back in December that we have worked on here and there, but it has been superseded several times by testing and various other things. We have changed groups twice now since then, so when we work on that they have to move back into those groups … which is kind of like going home in a way … it’s like, “Oh yeah I remember working with you guys.”
In addition we are in the middle of our Harris Burdick Google Docs collaborartive writing project and we just moved seats again, so today when we worked on that we had to move back into those groupings. Tomorrow it just might happen that we will end up in all three groupings in the same day.
Learning is messy!
Now, that IS messy! I’ve tended to more formal, sitting in rows mostly. I had planned to work in groups during the last few weeks of school to see how it goes — sort of a short-term experiment. Your post comes at a good time! Does it scare me off? No! I’ve tried this before and I realize that most of the success or failure depends on me, and how I present and manage groups. Wish me luck!
That sounds like a fun and interesting time. I have been meaning to ask you or Lisa about the ToS with Google Docs, how have you handled that?