Journal 13

 Franklin's Virtue project wasn't exactly easy, but it was insightful. There were several things I learned, and it was new and interesting to get to associate with people from other schools. I learned WAAAAAY more about Franklin than I ever had in my entire life, and I feel like the information I obtained will be helpful in the future. Having a challenge to accept made the Project much more interesting. I thought it was kind of cool how everyone had to pick one of the virtues and follow it for an entire day. I've never actually done that myself, and I learned a lot about how I act from that. I gained alot of practice with youtube because I was the editor, so by having to use it, I learned how to present a video and make it look cool. I also got to collaborate with several other students, including the Farmington ones, who were very willing to be a part in the whole project. For the future, instead of using E-Mail, I think that a Ning would be more efficient. A Ning is kind of like a facebook, but you can create your own site and friend people who are in your group, and then you can communicate with them over that. Having someone posts something on a Ning wall makes messages  alot easier to keep track of. I had to talk to my group via E-Mail, and because i get a lot of emails in general, it was hard to sort through the ones that had to do with this project. I think most certainly that having everyone set up a Ning would be much more efficient. Students will know how to use it because it's just like facebook, but it will only have group members on it, so the students won't get mixed up with facebook friends. I used one in the Netgen project in Speech Class last year, and it worked well. My partners  unfortunately  didn't really contact me AT ALL  in the Netgen project, but it worked for some other students and I think it would be nice to give it a try. Deadlines were another big deal. I think it would have helped if teachers enforced them harder, or went through a check list and made sure every student did their part. I had some problems with the video part because i was the editor. More time would be much better. Another class period would be great. The problem mainly was time. Students just didn't have enough time to get the videos done. Anyway, the project was alright. Communication, like always, was a big deal. One Plains kid and two from Farmington contacted me, but the other Plains kids did not. It was difficult to collaborate when people don't always contact you. We managed it though. It helped that there was a lot of individual work. That made it much better because everyone was responsible for them self. That was definitely a plus.