IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDO---Erm... Blog Entry

In your final blog entry, you should include a brief wrap-up report on the project.

The project went much smoother than I anticipated. I expected a group project (like most) to go terribly, and with the addition of many groups in other countries with other languages, I only expected the terrible aspects to be exacerbated.

Everything was completed in a timely manner, despite some early confusion on whether the project should be typed up on Google Drive or Word.

Be sure to discuss these topics in your final entry:

• Your impressions of working in a virtual team (including whether or not you would wish to do so again)

I would do it again with much less moaning and groaning than usual. A virtual team is much easier to manage than a physical team--especially in college when most people have constricted schedules and other responsibilities. I got lucky with my team, as everyone was willing to do their part and pitch in. All my other experiences with group projects has been quite the opposite, so if the group project was conducted like this one--YES I would do it again.

• The most valuable things you learned from doing the project

That collaboration is best to do online. The sharing of information is so much easier, and everyone can work on their own time which eliminated much of the stress of group projects.

• New skills you developed during the course of the project

I learned how to think critically regarding the construction of documents with the intent of translation. I had already had much experience with our topic, but thinking about it in terms of translation was new.

• A brief description of the leadership structure in your team and an evaluation of how effective the team leadership was

Leadership was not centralized, and I tried to establish this early on with all group members. I had constructed the Google drive document, and placed a Title leaving it open for anyone to claim any work they wished to do or interested them. I think this was confusing for some at first, because it was requested that someone take leadership (and someone offered my name). Seeing as how I was the leader in every group project in college, I tried to shy away from it and take an "Open Source" approach to the project. With Google drive it becomes possible for people to work on their own time, making improvements to other peoples work and their own.

• Things you would do differently in future projects, if any

In future projects I am really interested in mandating an Open Source approach to the project. No group leaders at all. It makes it very interesting to see how it all turns out. People can claim the work that they want to do. The only issue is that stragglers may get stuck with work they don't want to do (if it has to get done). But this is the nature of group projects. "Open Source" group projects work best for people like me that have extremely constricted schedules and cannot devote hours of pre-scheduled time. It is more feasible to work 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there. 




I hope you enjoyed my blog entries, as I did enjoy writing them!

All's quiet on the French Front

I hope you enjoy some of my blog titles (or at least get the refrences)

Hopefully this blog post won't get marked down, as there has literally been no change since I last posted.

Project is due at the end of this week, and it all better turn out well considering it's been pretty much done for so long.

For my reflection this post, I'd just like to discuss the importance of time management.

When it is done well--like this project--it can leave plenty of time to check things over and do other things (sleeping, eating, going to work--who am I kidding, there's no time for sleeping).

Much better than leaving things off to the last minute, may have had to learn that the hard way a couple times before. I'm looking at you Computer Science I.

Reflection

Working with the French team has been an enjoyable experience. It ended up being much easier than I anticipated. Group projects are always daunting tasks, which made me extremely apprehensive when we were throwing in multiple groups from different countries!

Everything went extremely smooth, though. Most of the collaborations took place over email, rather than on Sulis (especially with the UCF team). Hopefully this does not impact us negatively.

But, with the closing of the project near, Sulis has been extremely quiet.

The french team was very good at documenting issues, and how they resolved them.

This carries very well over to the working world, as I am experiencing it now. It is crucial to document everything, not only to cover your own behind, but to also help people who may need that information later.

Project Close

After much discussion and revisions, the project has been nearly completed. The differences in language have been discussed on sulis, and we are working closely with the french team to be able to address any issues they have with the language or pictures.

Also, it has been offered to spruce up some of the images with GIMP.

It is an interesting task working with people in another language. It really causes a new form of critical thinking to occur, to someone who hasnt done this before. You begin asking yourself questions such as, How will this translate? The use of things like idioms are so common in our culture, and they have to be completely avoided because they will make no sense.

Example of Transcription...

Hi everyone,

Here are some problems that we have encountered when we were translating your document, and how we solved them :

• PART 2 – Sign Up :
  In the French version of Google Docs, the option “Set Google as my default homepage” does not appear, so we didn't translate the sentence about the default homepage since it will not appear on the screen capture of the French version and we don't want to confuse the reader.
  
  
• PART 3 – Creating a New Document etc. :
  The document says “We'll start by following a Document”, but this is actually the only thing that is mentioned in this manual, you don't explain how to create a Spreadsheet or a Presentation etc. So we dropped the word “start” in the French version.
  
  
• PART 4 – Rename a Document etc. :
  The title “Rename a Document, Spreadsheet, or Presentation” appears twice : first as the title, then as a subtitle. We deleted the subtitle and started directly by the action to perform.
  
  
• By the way, it would be probably better in your English version to stick to one verb form: title 3 says “creatING” while title 4 says “renamE”.
  
  
• Same thing for “your document” and “a document”. We decided to translate by “your document” throughout the text, as we heard in our Technical Writing class that it was better to be consistent in this kind of document.
  
  
• Finally, there is a problem with the figure numbers : there are two figures 11 and two figures 12 in your document.

We are done with the translation now, we just need to add the French pictures to our text. Thanks for your replies Shehani and Nick!

Elaine.



So this came from the French team. It's a shame they ended up having more work to do than we anticipated, as we tried to make it as easy for them as possible. If this were to happen again in the future, it may have been better to choose pictures and captions that would not have to be translated so much. This would make it easier to translate instructional documents.

Spring Break!

Spring break has begun, however I'll be spending it working full time. I don't expect to hear too much about the project this week from our team, since it is spring break, but I'll be checking Sulis with (less) regularity.

During the break we are working closely with the French team, offering to spruce up any images they may have a problem with. This was transcribed on Sulis.

Sounds like a plan. Once the translation is done, would you like me to have at the pictures and make them look better? I taught myself (with my brother's help) in using a opensource version of Adobe Photoshop called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). I'll even do the same to the English versions of the pictures. However, the process takes time and for all of those pictures, it would take me about 2 days going full throttle at it. It is something to consider though.

From Nicholas. 

Excited to see how it all turns out, interested to look at a side by side comparison of the two works once theirs is done. Who knows? May even learn some French.

Intermission

Haven't heard anything from the other teams as of yet. This has given me time to work on other school projects and actually have some time to myself after work. Spring break is around the corner and I'll be spending it working full time. Joy.

We were worried about the images we had used and how that will affect the French translators. This was transcribed on Sulis.

This is what Dr. Flammia said We are going to leave it up to the translators to decide if they should find the screen captures in French. They should decide based on what they think will be the best choice for the French audience for the document."

So it is up to you guys!

Lost in Translation

The final product has been uploaded on to Sulis, ready for translation. Not sure on their progress or how it's going, just going to have to wait and see how it turns out (not that I would understand the translated version).

This will be the strange part of the project, because it's nearly impossible to keep up with the French team to see how they are progressing. Best thing to do will be to regularly check Sulis to see if they have any questions about our work.

Product Uploaded

Our group as finally uploaded our final product on Sulis. It was a hectic week of back-and-forth emails, most people were scrambling trying to figure out what they were going to do. At first, I thought it was understood that we would all collaborate on Google Drive -- as that's also what our project is based on. But only half of us ended up doing our parts on Google Drive and one person on Word. Unfortunately, the information does not transfer back and forth easily. It ended up being someone's sole job to put all the information together in a Word document.

After reflecting on the happenings, it probably should have been made clear which medium we should be doing our work on.

After much blood, sweat, tears, confusion, and bouts of pandemonium, the final draft was uploaded on Sulis on 2/22/2013 at 9:00 AM.

Collaboration's Beginnings

Work has begun on the instruction set for Google Drive. Two others have submitted some work. Unfortunately, one wasn't exactly an instruction set, but rather paragraphs of text saying what to do. In my mind, an instruction set is accompanied by many images, with bullets of short commanding sentences.

The other student that submitted work did so through Word and not Google Drive, so unfortunately for him, the work will not copy over to Drive 100%. It will probably have to be re-typed. I redid the one student's work that wrote the paragraphs, and converted it into short bullets and added pictures of what the bullets are talking about through use of the Window's snipping tool.

After that, I did two more sections of the document, on sharing and creating tables, and re-emailed the link to the drive document to all the students so they may all see what an instructional document is supposed to look like. Nothing to do now but wait and hope that others do some more parts :)

Here's the link to the Google Drive doc that is intended to be the final product... eventually.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lyxMsczXzpAo8NozO9MP1f3hh_-FE8njwQgiMLba-f4/edit



Group projects are usually daunting tasks when trying to collaborate with people that have constricted schedules, such as myself. Then try to do with people in other countries... interested/scared to see how this all pans out.

Survey Says...

Last night the survey was completed, 8 members of the group voted on what they would like to do the project on. It was a contest between Google Drive and Twitter. There were 6 votes for Google Drive and 2 votes for Twitter, so the instruction set on Google Drive usability may commence! I am glad to see that the group cares about equality of opinions, however I do feel like Google Drive is much better.

First Contact and Topic Discussion 2/11/2013

We have begun discussing possible topics to work on together through Sulis, as well as through e-mail. I began the chat room by introducing myself to any listening ears (eyes?) on Sulis. A couple of people agreed to the idea of doing the project on Google Drive, as well as writing the instructional document about Google Drive. I created the document below, and edited in such a way as to allow everyone to share ideas until we were unanimously set on doing this.

Google Drive link