Fourth Assignment Thoughts

I apologize for not attending class today. I am feeling a bit under the weather and decided that my priority today was rest being that we are so close to finals. After looking at what everyone had to say in the fourth assignment I realized that I was the only one that really had any problems with communication. It seems that I disrupted the organization more than anyone else and it got to the point where it felt like I was being ignored. I still do not have a post up on the organization blog and I don't think that I will get anything up there by the end of the semester. I have not heard back from Dr. Wallace about the frequently asked questions and I think that the Science Center has given up on this project. I will try to contact her again and hopefully will have something up before this project is over.

Assignment 4 part 2

This was one of the major concerns for the project. The Science Center student projects do not start until the kids come back from winter break so there won't be much to report on until then. We have not made any official plans for continuing the project. We did talk about switching the account when the semester is over but that is about it. If the frequently asked questions were to be finished I would suggest the next person create a new blog and link the blog I created. I will contact everyone again to talk about what will happen next.

Assignment 4 part 1

This blogging project did introduce new demands to the Science Center. George Davis, Tony Bormann, and Alison Wallace each did their own thing in regards to what the Science Center does. I think the porblem occured when I stepped in and asked for participation from all of them. They have been working in the same way for years and this project put new demands on the organization that they couldn't meet or didn't want to meet. This hurt my efforts to develop a blog for them. I still have yet to post on the organization blog due to the inability to ever have any form of communication with any of the members.
I can't really comment too much on the authority structure of the organization. As I said before, everyone in the organization seems to operate independently with George Davis as the official head. As far as I can tell each member has their own responsibilities that were decided when the organization was created. This seems to be why there hasn't been much communication between the members regarding my blog project except for the first initial meetings.
I don't know if I could have done anything different except for hounding the members to talk to me. I wrote e-mails asking for meetings. Recently I lost any communication with Alison Wallace about the frequently asked questions for the blog. I still have not heard back from her. I think the organization could have spent more time with me developing the blog. Answering e-mails would have been very beneficial as well.

Progress

I contacted Alison Wallace about the Frequently Asked Questions sections for the blog. I have not heard from her at this time. I did create the organization blog, you can find it here. There isn't anything on there as of right now. I had a more complete version of what the blog would look like with a few pictures but I left the blogger site without saving it and now I can't find where I made the changes. I make another post as soon as I get more completed. I spent about 2 hours on the blog and trying to find where I made the mistakes.

JC

Hurray, Another Meeting

I had another meeting with George Davis again today to discuss the organization blog. It was a pretty good meeting and I feel like I can finally set up the Science Center blog. We talked about what kind of information would be on there being that there will not be another planting until the next semester. He suggested a frequently asked questions post(s) so that I would have something to do once or twice a week. For this I would most likely talk to Alison or Tony for suggestions. The questions would deal with planting problems.
There was also a suggestion that I contact the "leaders" of the projects for each of the schools. This would be good to get their feedback on what they would like to see and what would keep them coming back to the blog. I thought this would be a good idea but scheduling conflicts are already a problem when dealing with the Science Center people. I can imagine that the teachers are just as busy with their third graders.
Scheduling meetings with Alison or Tony was also mentioned as a possible post. I'm not really sure how this would work but I could talk to Alison about it next week and see if we could work something out for that. Besides that, I should have the organization blog up by next week. There won't be much information on it besides important links, but it's a start.

JC

Update/Time Log

It has been a while since the last post, but that was due to confusion between Dr. Davis and myself. I think that getting the organization blog up is still a ways away. I feel like I have a good grasp on what the organization wants but I still am a little confused on how everything is going to work out. I sent out another message to Dr. Davis and am waiting for a reply. I did however stumble upon the Science Center's Third Grade Project website. It is not up and running yet and Dr. Wallace did not want me to give out the address yet. The site does give me more information on things that the Third graders are doing and what the "mission" is. I might need a little help on how I will make this work.
As for the time log. I spent about a half hour looking through the Third Grade Project website. About one and one half hours were spent on the meetings with Tony Bormann and Alison Wallace some time ago. About a half hour was spent looking at everyone else's blog.

JC

Meeting # 2 and 3

I met with Alison Wallace and Tony Bormann today by request of George Davis. The purpose of these two meetings were to find out what these two individuals would like to see from a blog that serviced the teachers of the third grade students that use the Science Center programs. Alison Wallace found that the blog would be good as a communication tool between the teachers and the people that are in charge of the programs. This would involve postings about questions received from teachers about how their plants are doing and progress issues like that.
One interesing thing that I thought the blog would be good for was problems with plants that students are tending to. There have been past cases in which George and Alison have received the same e-mails regarding plant problems. Putting answers on the blog would help with this by answering the question once and having teachers look on the blog to see if their question has been answered already. If a new question arises then we would answer that and it would remain on the site for another teacher to look up when that problem comes up with them. That was pretty much the meeting with Alison Wallace.
The meeting with Tony Bormann went the same way. We thought that his involvement in the blog would just be an "in the loop" to begin with. We decided this because his involvement with the Science Center is more at the site with the students and not dealing with many questions. The only time he really communicates with teachers is when they are setting up times for the field trips. The blog could be useful for this when the time comes, but that is a ways away. Now I have to wait for George to set up a time for us to meet and talk about what we discussed and try to move on from there.

JC

More wating...

After a week of waiting to hear from Alison Wallace and Tony Bormann, they finally replied to my e-mail. Both of them can meet with me October 10th at 2:00 and 3:00. George Davis wanted to attend one of these meetings so he could have a little input. These meetings will be less than one hour long so I am going to try to keep things moving and stay on track. My goal is to basically find out what each of them want from the blog and tell them what I can do with it. Feedback from teachers is most likely going to be the main focus of the blog but other things could be incorporated as well. I will keep you posted after the meetings. Hopefully I can get the organization blog up and running soon.

JC