Lesley Anderson

Meeting 7

Tonight we got together and finalised our recommendations. Even though it has been a hard slog and each member of the group has had their challenges, I think we have really pulled together as a group to create them. It has been amazing watching that final document evolving over the last couple of days and see how contributions were made for the good of the group and its overall goal - not for individuals. No-one was precious about the writing and we edited and revised what went on the page as well as discussing in the chat window of Etherpad, about the best way to go about things, whether things looked right or made sense. Overall, I think that this was probably the best learning session of all - thanks to RedPod members Liz, Ben and Mel.

Meeting 6

Wow, I am actually quite blown away after tonight’s meeting. I really think RedPod outdid itself tonight. It has been a pretty long haul this semester for most of us. Personally I have found the constant input quite difficult - with two subjects at CSU, a family to cater to as well as work. I know I will never take on this workload again and I began to think that none of it would come together.

It looks like we have just abou achieved it after tonight, though.  This was our meeting to put together all our findings and make some recommendations to our CIO in our Podtask scenario. As we needed to be able to edit our work together we decided to meet in Etherpad so we could take advantage of the interactive pad we could use to write on together. Our meeting began at about 8.30 - had to be a little later because Liz is an hour and a half behind us. We chatted and worked and chatted and roused each other and worked some more and joked around a bit.  Our meeting ended just after 11.00pm and we had the major part of our document done. I was impressed with the way we collaborated on this document it was a great job. Not so good was Etherpad, we had quite a few issues with it dropping in and out which was a nuisance, but, as we were all determined to get this done - we worked around it.  I am hoping to get into Etherpad again tomorrow and do some tweaking so that our document is just about ready for another meeting tomorrow night to finish off.  An excellent, productive, meeting.

PS - Liz and I have both spent some time on Etherpad today and we have a great document nearly ready to be published.  Tonight we should zoom through to get it finished.

Meeting 3

After Ken’s message back to the whole group - prompted by Liz’s email to him, I’m guessing - all seems well for RedPod again. As teachers, we are used to setting up collaborative activities and it makes sense to us to approach this task in that vain. We had a great discussion tonight about just what collaborative activities are and how they are set up and organised. 

Now that everyone is on the same page and happy with the direction we are taking we can move forward with the main part of the task - the research and investigation. I am working on the use of Skype for Professional Development and I have started looking at lots of different websites already.

I’m hoping to have something ready to post to the blog ASAP.

Meeting 2

I have been hanging on to my reflections on the Pod meetings - don’t know why. 
Thought it was time to publish them.

After this group meeting all the members were left feelin quite confused and unsure of exactly what we were going to do.  At the end of  the last meeting we thought we had it covered but further discussion opened up a whole can of worms. We are now unsure whether our original plans will actually cover all aspects of the task and the subsequent assessment.

We made a decision, that Liz would email Ken again and get a little bit more information and clarification - just to make sure.  This is a bit of a nuisance as we all really want to get started with the task.  We are working well together, though and the discussions are great.

I’m sure we’ll be on our way soon.

Meeting 1

As the date for our pod assignment was getting closer and we seemed to have little success facilitating meetings RedPod decided to meet on Friday 2/10/09 at about 8.30 pm using Skype as a meeting network.  We decided to use Skype as we had been chatting on it and found it a successful way to talk to each other. That time was chosen because one of our members - Liz Evans lives in Darwin N.T. and we needed to take into account the time difference.

The decision to meet was made by three of the pod members - myself, Liz and Melenna as we chatted on Skype the night before. We all felt we needed to make a start on our assessment and my thoughts were to try and get it up and running before my school holidays finished.

The pod has 2 other members - Ben, who was unavailable to attend and Shin for whom we had no contact details as this member didn’t appear to be using the forum and had not attended any previous attempts to meet.  We did post a message to the subject forum, just in case either of the other members were available.

During our meeting we did make some decisions about how we would address the assessment.
We decided to create a new blog purely for RedPod and use it to write our ideas and recommendations for the final assessment. This blog would become our group’s collaborative space and we would have all our research and information in one place.
We also decided to post reflections on the assessment, and logs of the meetings to our personal blogs.

We made these decisions knowing that other members of the pod needed to be informed and contacted - Liz volunteered to do this and I volunteered to create our new blog using WordPress.
http://redpod.wordpress.com

Our group also decided to take a social network each to begin researching in order to make a start on our assessment and meet again on Wednesday 7/10/09 at about 8.00pm for first discussions.
I created our blog and customised it a little to be suitable for the pod and I also created some categories to get us started.

Here we go…………