A few lessons learned from Unit 4

Group Activities are ...
hard/frustrating/scary when you have to complete something together ... we all use different methods of communication, check the e-College page at different times/intervals, etc. It's unnerving to not know when/if you will talk to your teammates .. and if it will be soon enough to complete everything. I am very nervous about the webinar.
interesting when the project is based on individual contributions ... bits making up a whole. I really enjoyed the structured discussion based on our favorite quotes from the Horton chapter.

The fun activities are fun :) selecting a song and an urban legend was really difficult for some reason!

Homework assignments -- weekly scheduling
I wish that homework was due every Tuesday and Saturday. That there was a structured, standard, expectable rhythm. Every week you check the syllabus and you find the assignments for that week and that they are due at various times throughout the week -- that makes me nervous and makes it harder to plan my week ahead of time. I have other things I have or want to do each week and need to decide when to do them --- each week being different makes it a bit more stressful for me. I see the need for this when we are cramming a class into a semester without any real "meeting days" ... and I can also see that since some of the assignments are discussions, the back and forth needs to be spread out ...

It's hard to think back to Unit 4 when i'm in Unit 5 ... I think the weekly blog should just be a recap of whatever. .. . Looking back over what we did ... picking a webinar topic -- I was late so I was assigned to a group; I'm not picky so the RSS/Podcasting topic will be interesting and I'm also interested to learn about the various other Web 2.0 tools that will be the focus of webinars.

As I read Horton I find it interesting and scary -- I don't think that I could be a true instructional designer ... there's so much to take into consideration!