Project Groups

Now that all of you have been through (or are going through) the process of teaching one of the Italian project groups, it would be nice to share some of the thoughts about it here. I'm interested to know how people feel about the following:

1. In comparison to teaching on the general English programme, how does this compare in terms of stress, timeload, difficulty of meeting the students' needs, and any other areas you can think of.
2. The specific problems that come up time and time again are, as far as I see it, the following:
How to get them to speak English rather than Italian in class.
Management and discipline in general - especially management of punctuality, keeping them on task, getting them to keep the classroom tidy(ish) etc.
Getting everything done within the time frame, especially with limited use of resources when they need to be shared around everybody.
The specific difficulty of a low-level group and how much we can really expect them to achieve - should we then lower our expectations or do some of the work for them?
Keeping the rest of the school happy and minimising dissatisfaction during these periods.
It would be great if people could publish their thoughts on these issues and share any tips they found for dealing with them.
3. How does the whole process work and is there anything we could change to make the projects more effective or easier on the teachers/Jackie/Rodney/the other students.....
4. Use of a blog as an ongoing record of what they are doing. If you get feedback from the students about how they find this that would be great. It would be interesting for example to know if any of them are sending the web address to family and friends back home and whether they are looking at it. Also, for teachers who have managed groups before, how does the blog compare to a report? How does the content compare in terms of quantity and quality, and is it easier to manage?

Looking forward to somebody other than me writing on this thing!!