Group Projects

Here in the Education Department group work is highly prized and often built into our course work. Over the last year, I've been fortunate to work in several groups, but one that was particularly successful. Together we have have written conference papers, traveled, and most importantly, still able to work with one another.

For out final project in Second Life, we are working in teams developing instructional modules. In this, I've had the opportunity to work with a new teammate, and I feel that it has been a great learning experience. In every group, there's always going some differences. From this experience, as well as groups prior, I've decided to create a list of characteristics that make good groups:

- Clear and constant communication
- Everyone participates
- Spending time together outside of projects (making personal connections)
- Establishing deadlines

Any others missing?

The demands of Second Life

This semester, I've been learning how to use SL on Mac. For the most part, it hasn't been too bad. Just a couple of simple new keyboard commands to learn. On the other hand, there are some thing that have changed, that I decide is Mac related or SL viewer 2.0. One my biggest irks/annoyances has been its sensitivity headphone jacks. If I don't plug my headset in before I launch SL, I won't be able to hear anything. If I unplug, then replug in, again the audio doesn't work. Does anyone know the cause of this? I never had this problem before on a PC and SL viewer 1.0. And while only a simple inconvenience, it was a feature that I enjoyed that enabled me to take a break away from my computer for a few minutes, and still keep up with what's going on in class.

Sigh...I guess that's the way it is between different operating systems.