Blog Discussion and Group Work

For our first activity today I had the consultants redo their blogs from yesterday. David had noticed that they were "lazy" and the consultants were not putting though into them and not taking the time to give us valuable input. I had a mini discussion with the consultants about feedback and the importance of their opinions in the research being conducted here, especially concerning the Ipods. I asked them to write at least 6 sentences and made a new rule that no system can be turned on until everyone has blogged. The consultants seem to have great ideas when we have verbal discussion, however they don't have the best skills when it comes to communicating their ideas in writing.
The consultants worked on their group presentation today as well. A group of 8 is way to many to have in a group, even though we had 1 consultant absent. Opinions really came out and conversation got a little heated. Some consultants are more vocal than others, and it was being misconstrued as "bossy". Even though specific tasks were assigned, consultants had input and ideas about others work and it wasn't always taken constructively. I had to mediate and keep them on task quite a bit. However, they were able to complete the presentation and I am impressed with the creativity they out into it.