Preparing for group presentations

Today was, mostly, spent on teams working on the group presentation task for next week. Remember that the purpose of the group presentation (and this class in general) is to help each other with the research for the four Building a Network PC tasks.

I asked everyone to think about how the presentations would be structured and delivered. The obvious way to create a sense of a unified presentation is to use something like PowerPoint. The use of a common platform will help link the elements of your presentation.

I also handed back some feedback on the minutes. Remember that the structure of the minutes should reflect the structure of the agenda. You should always have a copy of the agenda when you are writing the minutes.

Minute writing and feedback

I started off today by giving some guidelines on minute-writing, directed you towards the template on the P drive and then let you get on with that.

I also gave feedback individually to everyone who took part in the meeting next week. Some folk finished the minutes and others, I presume, are on their way.

Next week you will work in your teams to organise your group presentation to the rest of the class.

Research meetings

Thanks to everyone for your input at today's meetings.

There was a lot of useful research been shared - the fact that we ran over time on this is evidence of the amount of relevant information that people have come across.

One of the ideas that came up was for teams to share information on their research by opening up their Facebook sites to each other: that's up to you as teams. However, I will be collating all the sites that people are recommending and will put the links up on this blog.

One of the main points to come out of today's meeting is the importance of preparation. If you didn't feel that your slot didn't go as well as you hoped, then think about how prepared you were.

Next week we will be looking at writing up the minutes of the meeting and after that we will be looking at putting a group presentation together.

Thanks again for your hard work.

Preparaing for research meeting

Most of today was spent preparing for the formal (and assessed) meetings next week.

The first thing that most people did was devise an agenda for the meeting next week.

After that, everyone worked on their individual research. Remember that you need to come along prepared with written notes on two websites which are of use for your research for the tasks. Again, use "Document 2 Research and Reading 1" (page 11) from the Student Guide for this unit which you'll find on the P drive (see file location address on right hand column).

As everyone has set up a Facebook for their group and acting on a suggestion from, I have set up a Facebook space for me as a tutor (not my personal Facebook page - you don't want a window into my world believe me ...). If you want to invite me - I'm there somewhere.

If anyone has any questions about what needs to be done, please get in touch.

Practice group presentations and research

Today we started off with with two team (practice) presentations on two websites (microsoft.co.uk and cnet.com). Thanks to everyone for getting up and doing that. You had very little time to prepare for that. I've put the links to these sites in "useful links" on the column to the right.

What you did today as a team presentation gives you a sense of what you need to do individually in your team meetings in a couple of weeks. Remember that each of you need to present a summary and evaluation of two websites which are useful sources of information for one of the tasks.

Next week we will consolidate the research - in your teams you will need to make sure that everyone has researched two sites and has completed the handout that I gave out today (and last week). The title of the handout is "Research and Reading - Document 2 and is available on the P drive. See file location in right-hand-column of this blog.

I've also put up the tasks on this site - just to keep us all right.

Finally, it appears that everyone has set up a Facebook site and one group are using the Skydrive as a way of communicating and sharing information.

Completing the planning ... starting to research

Today we completed the planning of the work that you need to do. I gave out a handout which gave some detail on the various stages and dates that these stages will be completed.

Each team completed a single planning sheet for the team - each member of each team will have an individual planning sheet which should synchronise with the team one (the individual and team planning sheet may look very similar - that's fine)

I asked you to then start research as a team on one website that you think may be useful for the purposes of your research. You started on that and, after some problems with the computers, completed that just before we left. We'll take it up from there next week when it will be over to you ... each team will talk us through a summary and evaluation of their chosen website.

Starting the research project

Today we split up into the teams that you'll be in for the purpose of the unit.

Thare are three groups:


I gave out an agenda for everyone's first meeting:

1.Apologies for absence
2.Team name
3.Clarification of the purpose of the project
4.Team Members’ Contact Details
5.Acceptable group behaviour / group working
6.Who will do what? Team roles.
7.Strategy for successful completion of project
8.Any other competent business
9.Date of next meeting

It will probably not be neccessary to have a formal meeting with an agenda each week, however it is good experience to have more formal meetings with agendas every now and again. Part of the assessment for this unit requires you to organise, take part in and record the proceedings of a meeting.

The main thing that I wanted people to work out today was the objective of your team's project and to allocate tasks within the groups.

Now that we have a date for the submission of reports for Colin (second week in May) - we can work backwards from that to work out our timescale. We'll look at that next week.