Monthly Summaries

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Amanda Commented on

Dan Commented on

April Summary

Dana Sharp

            This past month has been quite busy for our small group!  We have completed our Community Educator Toolbox and completed the two assignments that took us by surprise as they weren’t in the syllabus, which were the Introduction to the Toolbox and the Survival Guide for Future EDAC 648 Students.

It was with great effort that our Toolbox came together, as we had all three read the assignment instructions differently and had some trouble early on figuring out how to load things properly onto the web page that we had chosen to make.  Luckily, Amanda figured out how to convert the audio component and made this happen, quite late on the Friday night that it was due.  Dan did an excellent job with the layout and presentation of the Toolbox and I added the audio summary that we all felt was a missing component to our web page. 

Dan did an excellent job of introducing our Toolbox and it was rather nice to hear his voice for the first time!  Poor Amanda had computer issues all week, but contributed through email and gave great ideas and advice.  I’ll admit that I probably had too much fun putting together our Survival Guide, using all three of our advice for future students.  I used Windows Live Movie Maker for the first time and was pleased with the results, although I hope it goes more quickly next time. 

We had a great and successful month and I truly enjoyed working with Dan and Amanda!  I felt that as the semester progressed, our group came together nicely and produced good results.

Dan Royer

For the month of April, all I can say is Wow!  This was a jam packed month and one that brought a full spectrum of experiences.  Our group effort was concentrated and found a new kind of collaboration as we co-constructed our Community Educator’s Toolbox.  I appreciated the awesome contributions of Amanda (who became our work around tech expert) and Dana (narrator extraordinaire), as we labored to bring our website to full fruition.  It was awesome to work on the same website at the same time, using messaging to communicate with each other.  We found as we worked, we were exploring one of the more powerful learning tools available to us—Weebly a website builder.  Based on this experience, we began to have a great deal more comfort with the technology aspect of this project.  For me personally it was an engaging experience as I was able to accomplish a couple of goals – figure out how to use Prezi, but also to integrate it into the website.  I will admit that it took me longer at first, but I found as I worked, I became more comfortable with both Prezi and the way it could become a part of the website.

I really appreciated the effort and the cooperation as we concluded our assignments.  Many of our questions arose from the nature of the closing assignments, but as we continued working through the projects we found that we were able to come together to complete them and submit them to our blog.  I really appreciated Dana’s expertise putting together the survival guide, and I appreciated the musical choice made in the video.

It doesn’t seem possible that this is the last of the semester already.  When I think about the journey that we have been on as a group, it has been challenging, but in the end it has been an awesome experience.  I appreciate the contributions that Dana and Amanda made not only to the group but to my learning experience!  I really enjoyed this group experience! 

March Monthly Summary

Group 5: Amanda, Dan, and Dana
Amanda Cruser commented on Groups 1 and 4
Dana Sharp commented on Groups 1 and 2
Dan Royer commented on Groups 2 and 3

The month of March has gone by quickly and hopefully the foul weather went with it!  Our group has spent the month on projects!  We’ve come together quite nicely as a team since adding Amanda to our group last month.  We’ve completely, successfully, two papers/projects as a threesome and I believe we’ve all been happy with the outcome of these papers.   We finally found a great rhythm when we broke the last project into three parts.  This made the finished product more come together more smoothly.  We look forward to finishing our next project, in April, which is the Community Educator Toolbox.  We plan to start discussing this project this coming week.

This month has gone FAST! Geesh! Although we did have a bit of a misunderstanding with the first project after I joined the group, that syllabus is quite the tricky read to have everyone understand it the same, we got it together and did a great job in communicating those concerns and produced excellent work on that assignment. We are moving along well in getting the work done and are all remaining flexible in yet meeting deadlines.  Breaking up the projects are definitely helping to make them more manageable and for project two Dana provided us with an overview of bullet points based on the syllabus to make sure we were all understanding it the same way this time. Thanks, Dana! – Amanda

This has been a very busy month.  It has been very productive and it has been a great learning experience for me as we have started to gel together as a group.  The learning experience has been improved and the group work has been improving as we learn to work together.  I think we have all learned a great deal as we have completed two projects this month.  Changes in the group along with the assignments have contributed to a significant learning experience for me.  My group partners have been great to work with, and I appreciate the efforts everyone has contributed to make the final submissions work so well!

Dan commented on: Group 2 and Group 4
Dana commented on:
Amanda commented on:


February Summary

February has been a jam packed month.  We have been quite busy with readings, posts and projects.  As a group we have been developing our process and have worked together on our first group assignment, the Community Education/Service Learning project.  Since we are a small group, we each worked on our own case study.  I (Dan) chose the Facing Poverty project which was a joint effort of the Facing Project, Ivy Tech, Ball State and several other community supporters.  I found that this project successfully broke through stereotypical attitudes about poverty, hunger and the way people who are trapped in poverty really are.  Dana chose to focus on Indiana Farm Bureau, Inc., choosing to highlight a program which engages kids in grades 3-12 in order to raise their awareness related to agriculture in all communities and discussing the importance of smart agricultural products.

We are looking forward to the coming month as we welcome a new group member – Amanda Cruser to Group 5.  For the coming month we are working on our community project and have developed our plan for fitting our work together for the upcoming assignment.  We have our own case studies and plan to finalize our elements for the paper this week.  We continue to look forward to the future group work and bringing together the contributions of each group member in our final project.

It is the month of January, and one which has been full of interesting learning and snow!   

This month we have learned a great deal about community education in general, but also a great deal about service learning through the online discussions.  It has been an interesting and engaging month.

Group 5 is a group of two and we have had the opportunity to exchange information and discuss a few of things related to the group project.

We have spent a good deal of time getting acquainted with the course, completing reading assignments and the two of us completing our community educator papers independently of one another.  Since we have recently been given group assignments, we have spent a little bit of time figuring out Blogger and getting this blog set up.

We have had some discussions and will continue to work on deciding what our topic will be for our project.  We are interested to see how this will all work out.  We are also looking forward to the learning ahead, so please stay tuned!