15/5 Week Four

We are still hard at work on our Needs Assessment. At our team meeting last week, we began to edit and review our draft Needs Assessment. As it was written, the problem statement described a gap in the type of instruction occurring (a lack of situated cognition/contextual learning). After much discussion with the team and Greg, we decided that we needed to rework our problem statement to reflect a gap in knowledge, since that's what our module is addressing. We realized at our meeting that our project had the potential to be very challenging due to the dual nature of our client's goals (educate about whales AND provide instruction based in situated cognition).

After the meeting, we emailed Dr. Schell and Alissa and communicated with them about the change in the problem statement. They both offered feedback and Dr. Schell also sent us links to two articles that could help in writing our the verification section of the Needs Assessment. The team feels confident that they are okay with the change. We are currently working through the articles and hope to have the Needs Assessment completed by Monday. The team also decided to go ahead and create a separate Scope Document since the clarification of scope has come up several times already in our meetings.

We also divided several other tasks that are upcoming: Objectives List, Task Analysis, and Timeline. Our plan of attack is for one team member to create a draft version of the document (posting questions to the wiki as needed), and then we'll come together as a team to edit and finalize each piece.

We also divided up the projects that we need to review for the Blue Sock Award. It's been a busy week for Imaginative Designs - and there's more work on the way!

To Do:

• Blue Sock Judging (tomorrow)
• Complete Needs Assessment and Scope Doc (Monday)
• Complete drafts of Objectives/Task Analysis/Timeline
  

15/5 Week Three

It was a busy week for Imaginative Designs!

Wiki
We've established a wiki for our team, located here:
[ http://imaginativedesigns.wikispaces.com].

We decided to use a wiki because we wanted a space to have discussions, post multiple versions of documents, and edit documents together. Additionally, our clients have already had documents that they wanted to give to us, but couldn't deliver via email since they were very large. We've invited Alissa to join the wiki as well, so she can have a central place to upload large documents. Alissa and all team members are up and running on the wiki, and I've asked everyone to start reviewing the information that's being posted so we can all have some familiarity with our subject matter.

In addition, our activity log is located on our wiki. Every team member will be responsible for posting her own activity logs to the Activity Log page (and I will be responsible, as the project manager, for reminding everyone to do this.)

Needs Assessment
At our meeting on Thursday, we discussed our upcoming Needs Assessment. As our instructional designer, Lindsay has been working with the client to solidify the problem we are trying to solve with our project, and to obtain the data we need to verify the problem. Lindsay will be posting a preliminary version of the Needs Assessment on the wiki sometime this week so the rest of the team can assist in editing and finishing the document.

Logo
Cheryl designed a logo for our team to use on documents and on our webspaces (it's up now in our banner). I'd like to add a team picture to the banner as well.

6200 Consultants
We have a team of five 6200 students who will be working with us on our project:

• Jason Naile - Content Entry (also possibly Flash)
• Ali Burrous - Evaluator
• HeuiSeon(Sunny) Lim - Video Editing
• Mark Caponigro - Proofreader
• Jea Choi - Flash Programmer/Animator
  

To Do:

• Complete Needs Assessment / Scope
  
• Begin Objectives List and Task Analysis
• Review project content on wiki
  

EDIT 6200 Consultants

We have five 6200 consultants working with us:

Jason Naile - Content Entry (also possibly Flash)
Ali Burrous - Evaluator
HeuiSeon(Sunny) Lim - Video Editing
Mark Caponigro - Proofreader
Jea Choi - Flash Programmer/Animator

Our consultant team is full - thanks for your interest!

15/5 - Week Two

We met with our clients, Dr. John Schell and Alissa Huelsman-Bell on Monday, January 14. We met for about two hours and discussed the project in depth. Dr. Schell and Alissa have many great ideas and lots of material to work with, so we focused on narrowing the project down to one essential deliverable.

Their desired product is one web-based learning unit on Whale Morphology, divided into 3 - 5 lessons. Teachers should be able to take the unit and use it with little to no development or changing, and our audience will be students in Grades 6 - 12. It is their goal also to have a template for the learning unit that can be used again in the future. Dr. Schell stressed also the importance of using situated cognition and contextual learning as a framework for this learning unit, and he will be providing our team with a chapter from his book for more information on these theories.

Tentatively, the unit will have the following sections:

• Focusing / Essential Question(s)
• Objectives
• Lesson / Activity
• Lesson 1 + Activity + Assessment
• Lesson 2 + Activity + Assessment
• Lesson 3 + Activity + Assessment
• Assessment
• Additional Resources / Enrichment

Our team also decided on our roles as team members. We are currently deciding on a team name.

To Do:

• Finalize team name
• Finalize 6200 needed roles and consultants
  
• Read chapter from Dr. Schell's book (provided by Dr. Schell)
• Begin Needs Assessment Report
• Begin Objectives List and Task Analysis
• Obtain Whale Morphology content from Alissa
• Begin activity logs
  

Welcome

Welcome to our project management site! This will be our home base for the project - we can post meeting times, documentation, discussion, and other important info here for our team. All Team 15/5s will be posted here as well. Once you all get your individual project sites going, please send me a link so I can post them on the sidebar.

Wow!

I've never blogged before, this is pretty cool! Carrie you will have to teach me a few things about this. I think I have found my new toy for the month?, year?