Reflection

A sudden twist of our fate changed and narrowed down our topic of child abuse today. Mr. James came along with both an idea and something that would make everything a lot simpler. We decided to switch from domestic abuse to corporal punishment in schools.

Logically, this topic for our assignment would be so much easier to complete! Think about it, we do not need to consider where our documentary is directed at, parent or children. We probably don't even need to make our outcome so complicated!

Imagine that we can find an organization that supports us in our topic, that corporal punishment should be abolished. We can hopefully dig out an outcome, maybe with sponsored t-shirts or caps, or I don't know. All we have to do now is preserve, and research. 

Reflection

Pressure and stress heaped on us as the weeks flew past us and silently we knew that sooner or later, the practical part of our project will have to be executed. For now all we had to do was plan on an outcome, and even that proved to be a nuisance.

Weeks of lessons have been ridiculously wasted on the pathetic yet necessary argument on what kind of outcome we should produce? how he outcome should look like? who should the outcome be directed towards? and what the outcome should consist of.

Funny as it seems that how this project can affect me. Indirectly saying, this thing has the power to screw up my social life, my personal life and my life. I understand that some people really love this subject and probably thought that this assignment is pure fun that directly relates to their Global Perspective grades.

Unfortunately for me I am not that type of a person.

I do not find happiness in investigating an issue in my society.

Too bad for me that it is something I must and should do.

Till then Maxwell, good luck and God bless.

Individual Reflection

The Group Work

1. What have I contributed to the group project?
   I am proud to say that I have lived up to my responsibilities and played my part our group project. I have researched, completed the work given, generate ideas when the team seemed most lost, while motivating and encouraging the teammates when everyone’s feeling down and finished. Contribution was the most important thing to me when I first joined this group. I knew that I had to start right and end right. I am also the team leader for other subjects, so I know how important individual participation is. I think it is fair to say that I have tried hard, but not the best. From the weeks of this mock project I have realized that interest is the key element in the efficiency of the work we produce and that was what we lacked the most, particularly me. I could feel the pressure on me as Stephanie urged me to get online to discuss about the project. Was I the only one feeling lazy and not bothered? Of course I have no right to judge my teammates but their constant slacking also pulls me downwards. They’ve tried hard and worked well, but what we lacked of was interest.
   
   
2. What would I do differently next time?  Why?
    Needless to say the group Peak Oil mock project was something we do not take much interest in. This made me realize that if we want to feel determined, if we wanted a driving force to make this sound important  to us, we will have to choose the right key topic. As much as I would hate to admit this, I did not contribute to the choice of key topic. All I did was vote. Maybe I should have thought of myself more individually, for my own good. I should have produce more choice of key topics to make me feel interested. The next time we do our real project, I will think hardly, and choose something worth spending time on.
   
   
3. What have I learnt about working together?
   Team work is so important, it is like a cure or medicine for cancer patients. Over the weeks I’ve realized that laziness is a disease that spreads from mate to mates. When one person is lazy, everyone would feel lazy. When one person’s interested, he or she will be the driving force, encouraging and pushing everyone to work as hard as her. Surely no one enjoys losing. With a competition to compete with, everyone would have to work their ass off. The word ‘TOGETHER’ itself means ToGetHer, or in other words a sense of determination to achieve something with someone.
   
   
4. What has been good/challenging about working as part of a group?
    The best part of working as a team is where you can point fingers at someone else to shake off the blame. Unfortunately for me this kind of attitude is unacceptable and irresponsible. When we make a mistake we take it as a team. The blame and consequences are spread among the members. However the bad part is when a member opposes your idea. Frustrating it is when someone says your idea’s useless or ridiculous. As I sat quietly doing my work, I overheard the other team quarreling, one of them even called the other’s plan as ‘pointless’. A tinge of sadness and frustration appeared on her face. Filled with toughness, she shook it off, and the other members just continued without even noticing or hinting her feelings. That my friend, is the worst part of a team.

What have I learnt doing the project?

1. What have I learnt about;
   
1. deciding on and planning a project?
   The choice of topic affects the determination and interest in us.
   
2. planning and producing research?
   Laziness is a disease. Keep your mind focused, eyes on the prize.
   
3. reading and presenting my ideas?
   Do not be ashamed of what you have. If you had done your homework and played your part, there should be nothing to be afraid of.
   
4. time management?
   Well this is something I don’t have. Who am I to say? However a simple tip is that YOU MUST BE PUNCTUAL as this can either earn your trust with other members, or break them apart.
   
   
2. What would you do differently to develop these skills?
    I would have spend more time on my work and less time in procrastination. I’ll have to work particularly on my time management.
   
   
3. How did I approach my individual contribution?
    Like I said I played my part and my roles. I’ve contributed enough for the team. Not to say I’m flawless, but I am not afraid to say that I have contributed enough, but not the best.
   
   
4. What are the most valuable points I have learnt?  Why?
   During the weeks, I’ve learnt more about my teammates to be honest. I’ve learned their ways of handling problems, their characteristics, their strengths and their weaknesses. 

The Mock Project Reflection

Group Evaluation
It is time to review your ‘mock’ project’ as a group.  You will need to discuss and answer these questions on your group wiki/blog/webpage.

The Project

1.     What area of study did you choose?  Why?

- Why are we looking for oil rather than alternatives oil?

- The topic sounded very interesting but yet again, we were too lazy to think of another topic to focus on.

2.     What did your groups hope to achieve?  What was your proposed outcome?

- Wanted to show awareness that peak oil is important to our lives.

- We wanted to create an advertisement and a documentary showing why people were not looking for alternatives rather than digging for more oil and how disastrous this issue can be to the society.

3.     How could you critically evaluate the success of your outcome?

- As a group, we can honestly say we did not create an outcome. So preferably speaking, the success of our outcome was a failure due to the fact we had lack of information, concentration and interest in the topic.

4.     What were your specific group roles and responsibilities?  How did you organise this?  Was the allocation effective?

- Stephanie's the leader when it comes to organization, whip cracking and giving out work as well as rewarding and encouraging us

- Adam's the leader when it came to the technical work and documents, what we should do, what we should add, how we should do it

- Maxwell's the leader when it comes to the times where everyone's feeling down, and when help is needed the most to raise the spirits of the young offsprings.

- The roles were quite vague due to the fact, yet again, we weren’t so interested into the topic, we didn’t give much thought about it. But then again, the roles were quite effective since we actually somewhat did work that we initially planned to do.

5.     Did your project have enough scope for every group member to play an active, full time part in the group work?  How could you improve this?

- Yes, we did have enough scope for every group member to play an active, full time part in the group work. There were so few members in the group, it might have had some disadvantages when it comes to the efficiency of our work. On the other hand, quoted by Maxwell, “it relaly magnifies our strength, weaknesses, and our determination as well as commitment.”

- We can improve this by doing our work more effectively, more commitment and better responsibilities for our own specific roles.

6.     Was the workload manageable in the time frame given?

- The workload was manageable in the time frame given.

- If we had been more hardworking, took more initiatives, and to focus more occasionally rather than slacking around, then yes.

7.     How effective were your minutes and agendas?  How did they help you?  How could you improve them?

- The agenda shows us what we’ve been doing over the weeks to indicate how hard we’ve been working, as hard as before, or even harder. It is sort of like a journal that allows us to keep track with the activities we’ve done.

- We’ve created one minute throughout the whole project. The minute was posted up on Stephanie’s bog and it was helpful because we occasionally look back to that post and see on what we had to work on.

- So far, we have updated our agendas according to every single meeting so there is not much improvement for this.

The Perspectives

1.     How did you gather information and opinions/viewpoints from a personal, national/local and global perspective?

- We gathered all the information through research.

2.     How did/ could you ensure you consider all these perspectives in your project?

- create a checklist and check it often so we know what we have to accomplish before the deadline.

3.     Would your outcome need to be accompanied by some additional explanation or elaboration?

- Preferably not. Because we would be stating almost everything into the documentary and advertisement. If we add more information, we might confuse the audience even further.

4.     How could you make sure you include cross-cultural views?

- Ask opinions (surveys) around the school who are foreigners.

- Get in contact with schools in foreign countries.

GROUP STORY

In this life-changing yet intriguing mock group project, our Global Perspective teachers set us a certain area of study, which was a project relating to Peak Oil. With that Adam, Stephanie and Maxwell were all set to face the difficult challenges we were about to encounter. Although we went as determine learners, we were finished off with disasters and tragedies’ inflicted upon us. At first, there were four of us, including Hong Yi. Very much unfortunate for us Hong Yi had to join the learners’ aid for Global Perspective class, which will eventually train and prepare him for the challenges we were about to face. He wasn’t ready for this, and understandingly we agreed that the best way to love him is to set let him go, leaving us with a man down, someone less a limb, a Templar without his sword, a shark without it’s jaws. Hong Yi’s departure left us with a sour taste between our taste buds, but we all knew that not everything will go the way we wanted. We just had to bear with it.

The Peak Oil project seemed interestingly mind blogging to us when Ms. Gita, a living legend, first introduced it to us. It seemed like an issue that we will have to face someday, an issue that can be the end of us all. Peak oil is a time where the production of oil reaches it’s very peak, and can only reduce. It is a time where all of us have finally realized what we have now, what we use during our needless and overrated daily activities, what we most depend on, what brings us to school and made the world so much smaller, was finally coming to an end.

Of course every normal kid like the three of us would be very much bothered by the thought of ‘not using the Internet’ or ‘not being able to turn the air-conditioning on’. Who wouldn’t?

Henry Lawrence Gantt

Gantt Charts are a useful method to help someone get smart and get organized. Henry Lawrence Gantt was a genius when he discovered the bizarre chart in the 1920's. But by the time officials discovered that the Gantt Chart was the key to road systems, the simple tool became popular world wide. A Gantt Chart is basically a gridded scale with the x-axis labelled as timeline and the y-axis labelled as different types of jobs or roles. As time passes the jobs or roles changes thus showing the amount of work we've done and the amount of time we've spent on the work. Some jobs or roles may overlap as somethings can be done while waiting for another thing to complete.

For learners who have no sense of time management and planning such as I am, might find the Gantt Chart a useful tool in aiding their studies. Assignments and school projects such as Global Perspective group projects requires an extraordinary skill of time management and the Gantt Chart might just be your bible. You can assign roles for members, assign deadlines for certain jobs, and also get a few people individual work to do at the same time. If a Gantt Chart exists then there can be no excuse of forgetting, confusion, or any form of conflict in the work assigned for each people. The school provided us with a remarkable program called the "Gantt Project" and I think that it is fantastic for learning and management. With a few clicks you can predict when you're going to get things done.

Sometimes people just do not know how to use technology to its full potential, such as I do. Therefore I am here to throw a few tips you might just find useful to you:

1. You can label every job or role in your Gantt Project, instead of looking for it on the right side of the page.
2. Colour coding is another way to make labeling look simpler. Some people just enjoy colours. Unfortunately I'm colour-blind as hell.
3. The Gantt Project timeline is infinite, you can make your Gantt Chart as long as you like.