So Long and Farewell

Well, we did it - we came up with an excellent field guide idea and we executed our plan until the very end. I feel like my team exceeded all expectations, proven by their semester-long hard work, dedication, and genuine care for the outcome of our guide. I'd like to thank Professor Danberg for all that he's done for the class this semester - we learned how to produce memos, present a business pitch, utilize in-class workshops to improve our writing, and create a field guide while working with a 4-man team. We learned business protocols as well as organizational behavior to plan out and execute our field guide topic.

Once again, thank you for an exciting, challenging semester.

One last farewell,
Brian Goetsch

Making the Pieces Fit

This week was a very productive one for every group in the class, whether they realize it or not. Professor Danberg had each group publish their draft intro on the wiki and print out a copy of each one to bring into class. We spent the week examining in detail everyone's introduction. This allowed us not only to fix our own intro, but we were able to compare our own writing to that of the entire class. It really put our field guide into perspective, which will be invaluable for our time management when we finally bring our guide to life at the end of the semester.
Another reason why I thought this was a productive week was that I really noticed a change in atmosphere in the room - and I think Professor Danberg did too. He separated us into 3 groups to examine each introduction, which allowed me to get to know the kids in the other groups. It was an interesting work atmosphere - gone were the awkward greetings and in its place came an understanding for one another. It was like we really knew each other because we all shared a common interest: making our field guide the best it can be. Professor Danberg really cares about his students, and the students in return have shown dedication to his project.

Out,
Brian Goetsch

Let's get it together! - Summary of our Oct. 10 class

We pieced our project together on Friday, and let me say that it looks absolutely incredible. We spent our class period working conscientiously on the project. I worked on the Concept Maps with a program called Microsoft Visio, which took an hour for the first two maps since I was getting used to the program, but I finished up the other four in another hour. Theresa and Lauren worked on our memo for the annotated bibliography. They've been working very well together; I can see them laughing and having a good time as they bounce ideas of each other. They are both very good writers who are not afraid to question the wording of a sentence or carefully go through and edit a paragraph. Tim finished up and double-checked everything we did, which was an excellent task for him since he's becoming a very good facilitator for our group.

Overall, I think we had our absolute best class period all year. We got the most work done overall, we all knew which task we were responsible to finish, we were focused for most of the class period (I think we were silent for the first half hour!), and I got to ask Prof. Danberg for a few pointers on concept maps at the end of class. I couldn't ask for a better use of my Friday morning.

Until next time,
Brian Goetsch

A few of my favorite things...

I really can't ask for a better group.
All this week, we've been on top of everything Professor Danberg gives us. We came up with our topic by the end of the 2nd week, which is Wilderness Survival. Lauren brought it up as a possible choice because she has been a part of a club here at SU dealing with wilderness survival. We matched this up against my idea of a guitar lesson field guide, but after research both topics we found that hers would be much easier to inform a wide audience about.
We have been brainstorming about what we would put into the field guide, and we've developed an enormous list describing 7 main topics of choice. Everyone has been pitching in - Tim, Theresa, and Lauren - and our development as a group has shown in how we interact with each other. It started a little awkward since we were just getting to know each other, but now we have laughing and joking around all while getting all the work that needs to be done.
I'd say we're ahead of the game in terms of other groups, but I still don't want to let that slow us down. We have the ball rolling now; we can't be stopping now.

I'm out,
Brian Goetsch