English 420Y - Business Writing Online

The first week went very well for our group. I sent out an email about myself after I found out who my group members were. I introduced myself and the times Iwould be available throughout the week. I met my other group members iin an AIM chat room and discussed the Gantt Chart and some upcoming projects. We worked on the chart together and gave each other ideas. We all worked together on this first meeting to figure out the dates of projects and how we would spilt it up. In the upcoming weeks, we will have more independent work before we put it all together.

This week our group just got to know each other a little better and decided who would do what for which brochure. We had a buddy chat on AIM Thursday night and decided that Steven and Daniel would work on the general brochure with Daniel doing the design/graphics and Steven will do the content for it. Alayna will do the content for the "caring for your pet" brochure and I will do the design/graphics. We also put together the Gant Chart that was due today.

The first week of working with my group went really well. Honestly I was a little eerie about working with a group online; it does and still kind of scares me. When we were assigned our groups Suchet emailed us right away and I was absolutely shocked to find out that he was living in Singapore for the summer and we were working in a group together. I know it is going to be challenging at some times but I believe that we will work through it. Everyone in my group has been corresponding through email and introducing themselves, telling us where they live and what they are doing for the summer.

The first week went very well and was quite productive for our group. I sent out an email about myself after I found out who my group members were. I introduced myself and the times I would be available throughout the week. I met my other group members in an AIM chat room and discussed the Gantt Chart and some upcoming projects. We worked on the chart together and gave each other ideas and information to add. We all worked together on this first meeting to figure out the dates of projects and how we would spilt it up.

Here is the group 1's Gantt Chart we produced.

As Week 5 comes to a close, our group is continuing to work hard to prepare for our service learning project. After learning my group members, I quickly emailed them to introduce myself. I have continued to write informative emails all week to update them with what is happening. I have done a good job responding to emails in a timely manner. My emails included details on how to organize the group and asking for volunteers for the different aspects of the project. After continuing correspondence, I have assumed the role of the group leader.

Our group introduced ourselves this week via the wiki page. We met on Thursday night on AIM and discussed what we would need to do to accomplish the brochures. I recommened making 2 groups of 2 with each team doing a brochure. The group agreed on this idea. Daniel and I are working on the general brochure. Daniel will be doing the design while I will be focusing on the content of the brochure. Alayna and Cory will be working on the Caring for your pet brochure. Alayna will focus on the content and Cory will be working on the design.

This week was only the preliminary stages of the project. I fortunately have an excellent group. We all introduced ourselves via e-mail and are trying to figure out exactly how the team is going to work together to finish this project.

I wanted to provide some notes on the Service Learning Project that may answer questions arising in the groups. First, I can see from my email box that you are actively trying to contact each other, and that you all have very busy schedules that are difficult to coordinate. Email and instant messenger are both good tools, but we have also instituted wiki pages that allow each group to post content that members of the group can read. I see some of you are taking advantage of this, and I recommend all the groups use them to post comments, messages, and files.

Because this project is not built around topics relevant to your majors, I have grouped students randomly based on their position in the Drupal users list. I will email each group to initiate contact between members. The groups are listed below: