Week 18 Learning Journal

I guess the main focus this week was extracting features from the storyboard (activity 16)  and selecting features to include in the prototype (activity 17).

We discussed this a lot during our team call on 7 June 2013.

Points discussed on the call:-

• On our call we weren't really sure what a 'feature' means in this context, and why this stage of extracting and selecting features was really necessary.
•  David offered to complete the features table, leaving space for us all to fill in our prioritisations.
• [Having now gone through some prototyping, I can maybe understand a bit better the need for an extracting and selecting stage - when you have a clearer sense in your mind of the learning outcomes you are trying to achieve, then maybe you can sense which parts of your storyboard need particular focus].
• For the overall reflection on this process, one of the things I'd like to give more thought to is whether we could have done this extraction and selection stage more effectively.
• In practice, I think we've ended up prototyping pretty well everything!

Team dynamics

• Good and always improving as rapport levels get higher. John has separately commented on the stage of the call when he sought clarification on whether the course was focused on the teachers as the learners, or whether it was intended that the immigrants/refugees should be the learners. He wrote in his post that he felt gently corrected by the rest of the team in a professional and objective way.
• I find that everyone has suggestions and comments that add value - for example, on this call, Asanka could foresee that if we all prioritised the feature table using the same prioritisation columns, then disagreements in the prioritisation would be hard to track and understand. She therefore suggested adding columns so that we can individually give our prioritisation.
• Asanka also pushed for us to make the design more learner-centred wherever possible. The example we discussed was whether we present learners with examples of great digital stories, or whether we ask the learners to go and look for great examples.
• This led on to a discussion on whether or not we could write a prototype that differed from the storyboard - the team had split views on this, and I was asked to clarify with Paige, which I did on the cohort-wide call on Sunday 9 June.

John offered to do a note of the call - Paige had suggested we recorded the call - we all thought this was a good idea but couldn't record in skype, so took extensive notes instead.

Wish we'd done this on earlier calls as this would make it easier to reflect on the whole process.