Weekly Reflection #2

     This past week, I was away in Ottawa for a program called Encounters with Canada. Although it was an amazing experience, it meant that I was not in class to work on my project with Andrew. Obviously, the separation can present an issue when it comes to the progress that is made, as it is a group project. Before I left, Andrew and I did make some plans as to how we would communicate. We stayed in touch via Facebook during the week. As mentioned in my previous reflection, we decided that Andrew would work on the Powerpoint for our presentation and we would then start filming once I got back.

      During the week, I tried my best to stay in touch and get updates on whatever was going on. My week was pretty busy, so our conversations were rather brief and didn't happen often. Because we didn't talk to often, I think that we should've made the conversations more efficient, as I feel that the updates were a little bit vague and too general. I think that this is partially to do with the fact that I often didn't think about talking to Andrew until I had minimal free time left, thus making our conversations rushed with not too much thought put into it. 

       Our conversations mainly consisted of a rough status update on our project and a list of what needed to be done from that point. Over the week, Andrew gathered and organised points for our presentation. He had planned to put it on a Powerpoint, but didn't have time to do it. Unfortunately, we haven't made as much progress as we thought we would last week. Thankfully, because we were ahead of schedule before, we aren't behind schedule from this setback. However, I would have rather seen our extra time spent on putting extra details into our project rather than making up missed work. 

      Another thing that we encountered upon our conversation when I came back to school was a miscommunication. I was under the impression that we were planning to present our project to another class as well as our own, while Andrew thought that we were just presenting to our class. I think that the source of error was not really from a lack of communication, but more of an unclear communication of details. I am glad that we caught this mix up early rather than later, as it could have lead to bigger issues down the road. In the end, we decided that presenting to our class only wouldn't be the best idea because they already have a rough idea of the topic of our project- which would make trying to convince them that our video is legitimate more difficult. We also decided that it may be too much of a disruption to present to another class, as it would take up class time and interrupt the class. So, we would like to ask Ms Lees if she could send out a link to our project via twitter and then have the recipients fill out a brief survey that would give us an idea of how much the audience believed. 

     Upon seeing the previous miscommunication, it made us wonder if any other details had been missed or confused. So we went through our plan again, to make sure that we were both on the same page (which we were) . In the future, I will be sure to confirm what I am understanding with Andrew and not just make assumptions that what I think is right. This issue something that has occured in previous projects, though not too often. This situation has made me more aware of it and will help me in the future; not only in school projects, but in other situations when I am talking with groups as well. 

     Our plan for this week is to start filming, as previously discussed. I am excited about some of the details that we have added into our video, which will make our video more fun to create, but also more believable. Of course, I am a little bit anxious to see how the video turns out and to see how the audience will react to it, as it is not something that I've done before. However, I think that trying new things and stepping out of your comfort zone is how you can learn more about yourself and how you can grow yourself in different areas. Once we are done the project, I am curious to see what other unexpected things that I will have gained from doing this project and working with Andrew.