Post-Mortem: 1 Maju Group Blog Project

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Introduction:
My time at SMK Putri Titiwangsa has come to an end & so has my time with 1 Maju.
With that, the 1 Maju group blog project has to be shut down & evaluated.
This blog post will discuss the advantages & limitations of the group blog project I have observed as the supervising teacher of this project.

Advantages:
- Positive Group Work
The nature of this project is to provide activities for students to complete in groups.
In the class, I saw a lot of genuine group work being done. For example, discussions, negotiations and delegation of tasks.
Students often worked together to complete an assignment before handing it in for final draft checking.
With group work, students were provided more challenging tasks to share the learning burden & to come up with solutions together.
There was also a lot of learning from each other & viewing from different perspectives taking place.

- Motivating
The students really took ownership of their blogs and started to decorate it.
Many even put extra effort into their posts by adding pictures & incorporating different fonts.
They were creative & they did their best to produce a good piece of work.
Every time I mentioned that they were going to do something for the blogs, the class instantly jumped into life!
Writing has always been thought of as a chore but this project has produced an exception.

- Language Enrichment
I used the group blogs mainly to internalise Process Writing.
Furthermore, when my students discussed, drafted & wrote their essays, there was also a lot of general language practice.
Grammar, vocabulary & spoken language practice were integrated with the writing practice.
The main focus was Process Writing & this was drilled into them successfully.
Today, any 1 Maju student can recite the 6 commandments of Process Writing & elaborate on each step.

Limitations:
- Individual Focus Lacking
Due to the size of the class, I had to put more people into groups (6 in a group).
I only had 5 groups because prior to the commencement of the project, only 5 students have had experiences with blogging. I got these students to lead the groups.
Having a large number of students in the groups makes it very difficult to develop or assess individual ability.
This is an important requirement for any activity taking up classroom time because, at the end of the day, individual ability is what is assessed in the school examinations.
Having larger group work hindered individual language proficiency development by causing dependency on one member for certain tasks (exp: proof-reading).

- Sleeping Partners & Partners Left Out
There was also the problem with group members not doing anything for the group as well as some quiet group members being left out altogether.
Having more prominent personalities in a group may have caused the quiet students to be left out or to decide to let the 'better' students do all the work.
Then again, I did also observe, that in some groups, the prominent personalities proactively included the quieter students.
However, in most groups, they were just sitting at the side watching the discussion.

- Deadlines Not Honoured
There was also the issue of groups not getting their posts up on the internet on time.
They had their drafts written and checked on time but putting it online was a problem because not all students had internet access & not many students could go online at will.
I could have taken them to the computer lad but I had a syllabus to finish.
Therefore, they were forced to do the posting at their own time.
Internet access was found to be a limiting factor to completing assignments.

Conclusion:
Group blogs is an excellent activity for language enrichment.
Blogs are mainly written so it is a great avenue for writing practice.
Writing group blogs have been found to be motivating & exciting for students.
Just like all types of group work, group blogs have been found to develop leadership, negotiation skills, cooperative learning, viewing from different perspectives & ICT skills amongst others.

However, there are a few considerations to take into account.
First of all, the groups cannot be too big. Grouping needs to provide each student with almost equal opportunity for participation. (4 in a group would be ideal.)
Secondly, the internet access of students has to be seriously considered. There must be a few students in the group who have internet access at home & are able to use it anytime.

I would love to carry this project on with this class because this activity was clearly motivating & it gave them a unique avenue for expression & production.
However, this is not possible because I have left the school.
Therefore, I will assess the situation in my future school &, if the conditions are ideal, I will implement a similar or improved version of this project.

Thanks for Your Participation 1 Maju!