SPC1017 Group 1 Blog - Carlos Rodriguez

      Hello again everyone! my name is Carlos Rodriguez. For the previous project, I was a member of Group 1 to which we were the first ones to present. With only two days to coordinate and create the whole project while really just not having met one another was going to be a rigorous task, or so I believed. My experiences with group projects in high school were very mixed because in most groups there were a few members who ended up not doing their part of the assignment and as a result either some classmates did the missing part or it would just not get done causing the overall aesthetic of the project to be of poor quality. It is safe to say that within my group and as a class overall, I have found people who actually put in the work and want to cooperate with one another. 

 

     The day the project was assigned all of the members of our group opened a group chat and immediately started to brainstorm possible ideas for how the structure was going to be as well as the order and each individual responsibility for all of us. The best part and which I admire most was that every single suggestion and opinion was respected and acknowledged. I believe this led us to have a balanced structure between the slides while also making each slide unique in its own way. The fact that each one of the members had creative freedom and most importantly, creativity was amazing to me. You could tell everyone just really cared about their own tasks as well as respected others so no one wanted to let the group down. Now, our group wasn’t just all over the place, we named a leader which directed us in the general idea and ensured none of us strayed from the goal at hand. Apart from our leader, most members took on roles that ensured the project was turning out great and our progress would remain smooth. Throughout the day our group would ask how far we were along and for some of us who didn’t have access to the book, we shared the pages and kept asking if anyone else needing assistance. Something I had never experienced while being part of a group before was that we ran lists per se. Meaning that it would allow us to practically see who was done and who still needed to do their part, after that first day of planning, with one day left, we got to work. 

     Most of us had to work and would need to start our parts much later than others. Even so, I would log into the google slides and see how slowly but surely each one of the slides started to get filled with words. It was like seeing a skeleton not yet formed filled, at that point we only had the start and most of us only had the titles. However, at around five in the afternoon is when I started seeing exponential development more and more of the members had either finished one complete slide or they were almost finishing it.  Even at that point, everyone was brainstorming suggestions on the most effective ways were of plotting down the information as well as balancing it with what our presentation was going to be. Ultimately, we all did not want our slides to be the exact same wording that our presentations were going to say so we all agreed to limit the slides and include visuals so when we talked the listeners could make mental pictures of our topics and just overall be more enjoyable to experience. One of our members made a video so that was super helpful in creating diversity between our project and helped elevate its quality. What I personally did was that I first read and analyzed the sub-chapters that I chose and after I understood the point it was trying to make, I made a summary on my notes app. After doing so, I extracted the most important information in my opinion and wrote it on the actual slide itself while also adding pictures that had a connection to what I was referring to. Even after doing all of that, I wasn’t done, I went back to my notes app and from the summary, I created a summary which was in the format of me talking to the audience so when I had to present all I had to do was read from my notes and include examples which popped up on my head in addition to the examples I added in the notes themselves. It didn’t take me long to finish my parts, so I was intrigued at what my group members were up to in terms of progress. I was very surprised when I saw our whole presentation was practically finished, it was lit up like a Christmas tree and everyone was in full-on work mode, everyone kept staying to try to make the finishing touches and to add pictures that matched the themes of one another, so it stayed nice and neat graphically. Our group mates touched up the title slide and even slides that were from others just to go the extra mile and help each other as much as we could. I will go as far as saying that when the group members who came from work saw the presentation they were shocked at how organized and full everything was. Even those who started later finished quickly and everyone was done before the morning of presenting. However, the work was not done, that morning we woke up early and got to work to make touch up any parts that could be improved and added even more graphics to improve overall esthetics. All in all, I would like to give my gratitude to every member of my group, I learned a lot, not from our presentation itself with all the concepts in the chapters but from our work ethic and consideration for one another. I hope to keep working with you all.