Collaborative Work: VLCs
David Loertscher’s virtual learning commons template was helpful to creating our own website because it laid out plenty of concepts to modify. I found the “Purpose of this page” section most useful to define the section terms used in the template itself. If I gave Loertscher my feedback, I would suggest rewriting his template descriptions in more common English. Not that his text is incomprehensible. Such a template would be more helpful if it did not just give specific directives: “knowledge building centers, Book2Cloud, Moodle projects, projects done in content management systems, technological learning spaces, or face to face projects with the organization done in digital space“. Instead of this, I advocate explaining better what each section accomplishes. Putting together content as a group in our class time involved an overabundance of throwing dart ideas to see what will stick.
I was also startled by the template workings of Google sites. In our group experience it seemed that a user would be forced to choose the layout ahead of laying in content. When we attempted to remove a column, there was not an intuitive way we found. When we tried to click different template options, we seemed to temporarily lose content. Interfaces like Weebly allow users to drag and drop items if they change their minds.
What caused no grief was our group work putting this together. Everyone made an important contribution to the final product. More important than that, everyone gave feedback to each important change. A project cannot always assume group members will have an equal amount of ideas that survive, but the collaborative environment was there. I am confident in saying I would work with any of those group members again. (2)
My main contribution to the project was in content creation. When we put in our sample “contest” for student collaboration, it originated from outside research I brought in. I mention this because I did not let that be a factor in how I interacted with my group. When others suggested adjustments (from textual to rules), I was verbally positive because I could see that their ideas improved the final product. (2)