Collaboration Can Be Fun

Between our video groups and our online story groups, I have learned and grown as a reporter and as a teacher of reporters. The group work here has been invaluable. The two lunches my group has had with our mentor have been so helpful. Jennifer McClellan showed us how to hone our focus for our articles until it was razor thin, and she did this by questioning us. In my own classes, it would be easy to take an experienced reporter and make them a mentor to a group of beginning reporters. I think I would have to coach the leaders a little to do the kind of mentoring that Jennifer did for us, but it could still work.

Our story groups have been equally enthusiastic and helpful. Yesterday, I thought I had a pretty good first draft, but they still found so many ways to streamline it, focus it, and just generally improve it. We each gave our group members a copy of our papers, and then we each read our articles aloud while the group members followed along and wrote comments silently. Then, we went through it paragraph by paragraph, and in some spots line by line. This is a simple and effective process that students could also use in class. It also didn't take very long, so that's a plus, too!

Working in our video groups has been really rewarding as well. Since video was new to me, I relied heavily on my group members, and I cannot praise them enough. When one of us didn't know how to do something, one of the others did. What made my group so great is that we were always willing to stop what we were doing and help each other. It was really rewarding, and that's exactly how group work and collaboration is supposed to work.  Thank you to all my group members from all the different groups I've been in here.

Shannon Kuehmichel
Berlin High
Berlin, Wisconsin