situation Report numero 2

Today we went to P.K. again and were able to meet with our classes for that amazing 40 minute block that the teachers are so wonderful to let us have.  We met throughout the week as a team and formulated a plan of attack for today, so the four of us all felt very prepared and ready to tackle the world, which is the feeling I like to normally possess before entering the classroom.  We started off the day with all 54 third graders and having a voting session on naming our project.  We wanted to allow them to choose the name that we would be calling the project, but also had a pretty limited schedule, so we gave them a list of four names to choose from.  The vast majority decided on "Little Hands, Big Hearts" as our community headline! Then, we split up into our crews and were in three different classrooms, each teacher with 18 students, and Raihan overseeing and recording video.  I was able to explain all about the video that we were going to be making, talk about the jobs we would need in our crew, ie anchors, cameramen, editors, directors, etc. and even go over some video production terminology that they were somewhat unfamiliar with.  We discussed what a "scene" was and even created a storyboard together as a class.  So far, everything has been going great and the plan for next Wednesday's meeting is to assign specific jobs and let the students explore and play with the video production equipment that they will be using, cameras, tripods, editing software, scripts, etc.  I'm really a lot more confident in the project than I originally was because everything is starting to become more concrete and outlined.  We don't all four have the exact jobs that we thought we would in the beginning, but splitting up the crews has made everything more manageable and individualized for us and the students.  Now, instead of us all dealing with 60 children, we are able to each give our 18 a more exclusive and memorable experience.  We are all very excited to be finally getting the ball rolling and actually talk amongst our specific crews about the plans for the project.  I personally am really looking forward to next week when my crew gets to experiment and just learn on the equipment.  I'm really ready to hear more of their ideas and see them work.

Situation Report

Working with third graders has proven to be one surprise after another.  Our group has currently met with all three third grade classes as a whole twice and both times, they have come up with such amazing ideas, I find myself blown away. Our initial meeting with the students began by showing them a video that Raihan found which featured a group of students in Australia who had done a number of impacting things in their classroom to help the world.  The students were immediately inspired and came up with amazing ideas for how they wanted to impact their community.  We asked them to generate their thoughts on what problems they saw around Gainesville that they wanted to help with.  After this initial meeting, we compiled the list of the children's concerns and decided to go with a majority consensus.  We discussed with the children that we would be voting on one topic, so we knew that they would be alright with the idea of only focusing on one specific area of  concern.  They were so excited to be helping the needy around Gainesville.  So far, our project consists of three crews that will be working on different areas of a major donation drive.  We are going to be collecting items to donate to the Arbor House for homeless single mothers in Gainesville.  The three crews of our project are going to be a news crew, responsible for documenting and creating a finalized video of the entire project, a website crew, responsible for creating the project website that will display what we have been doing and the goal of our project, and finally an outreach crew, which will be responsible for collecting donations and making the community, local businesses, etc aware of our mission.  I personally am going to be in charge of the news crew and helping students design and create the video that will be a representation of our final project. I’m so excited to see that the homeless and needy around the area is such a high priority for them and am really ready to get started working!  I’m a little concerned about the level of involvement this is going to take because right now, it’s a lot to comprehend and “rap my head around” but I am confident that my group and I will be able to work together to figure it out. So far, everything has been going GREAT!!