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Diary of an After School Clubber
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Return to Project Zone Home Page I am a freelance webdesigner. I was approached by Groundwork to set up a web site project in conjunction with Highwire - a multimedia resource centre - in Shoreditch. It is an account of how the following site: www.highwire.org.uk/yerbike/index.html came to fruition and will prove useful if you are setting up a website project. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me:
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| 15 December 2001 |
| Meeting at Groundwork with Greg MacNeill (GMc)and Anthony Brown (AB): Discussed aims of the 'yer bike' (YB) project and how it will fit into the National Curriculum (NC). AB felt that science in particular can be exploited in this project and pledged some input. GMc emphasises the pioneering nature of YB and the need to record every success and failure for future reference. The kids will produce/create both design and content with little (if any) tweaking at the end. They will also be encouraged to consider material for younger audiences as well as their peers. |
| 18 December 2001 |
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Meeting with Vivi Lachs (VL) at Highwire: Discussed overall concept of the bike site and brainstormed different potential sections: · General safety (training, highway code, clothing, accessories, safe routes) It was thought that personal experience / emotions / stories should where possible come into all sections. The main page could be a diagram of a bike & rider - hotspotted with the various sections. VL organised some technical back up while the project is running. Jody at Highwire - who handily is very interested in bikes - would run the project jointly with Michelle Established timing of project itself (9 contact days 14 Jan 2002 -18 March 2002). VL gave me contacts at 2 local schools (Haggerston and Homerton). |
| 19 December 2001 |
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Went to Homerton College of Technology (boys school) and met up with Lindsay Talma (Head of Science) who put me in contact with Mr Taylor (Head of Year 8) who in turn put me in contact with Christy - Head of Gifted and Talented kids (G&T). They all showed enthusiasm for the project and Christy agreed to round up some lads. Left a message for Steve Townsend at Haggerston Girls School telling him about the project. Over Xmas break I read 'MULTIMEDIA IN THE CLASSROOM' - very informative - a useful starting point |
| 7 January 2002 |
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Made contact with Steve Townsend. Agreed to meet following day. The need to acquire mobile phone numbers/ email addresses of teachers is paramount ! Made a poster (A4, photocopiable) advertising the project and laying out all details including my own contact details and those of Highwire. |
| 10 January 2002 |
| Steve had to cancel meeting. Couldn't contact him so turned up on doorstep of Haggerston on 10th Jan. Got to see him - very enthusiastic - wanting to get other students to contribute content as well as those actually doing the project. Said he'd also like to come and watch it in progress. Would gather together who he could for Monday 14th. Teachers are welcome to come and observe - enhances school involvement and the learning process. |
| 11 January 2002 |
| Got to see Christy at Homerton - who had gathered together a group of boys, only one of whom was earmarked to do the project. Most boys failed to turn up which surprised the G & T co-ordinator as they had seemed really up for it. Most boys who had turned up were G &T Year 8's who were part of a committee who reported on school events. I tried to get them involved in the project as they were there. I gave a brief outline of what they could expect to get out of the project. Christy said she'd report back on the whereabouts of the original project team but would only see them on Monday 14th. |
| 14 January 2002 |
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I rang Steve at Homerton - he was just composing a letter for parents of attending students - asking for permission for sts to travel to and from Highwire without teacher supervision. However he had not had enough time to gather them together and get commitment. This coupled with news from Christy that she was having logistical problems getting younger boys to and from the venue, meant that the proposed starting date for the project - today - had to be postponed till following Monday. I informed Vivi and Greg of these issues. Vivi suggested that perhaps we should offer the project to older boys for whom transport wouldn't be a problem. I emailed Steve and Christy with this suggestion but also indicated that I had no particular age restrictions in mind for this project so if younger girls mixed with older boys then that would be fine. This later proved to be an issue. |
| 17 January 2002 |
| Heard nothing from the teachers … on Thursday I tried to contact both teachers - Steve confirmed 3 girls on Monday … but I couldn't contact Christy. Just hoped for the best. |
| 21 January 2002 |
| On the day just one student turned up with Steve from Haggerston…with apologies from the other girls. We talked for a couple of hours along with Jody about web stuff, but didn't make a start on the project. There was a text message from Christy saying there were still logistical problems … in fact the children had got authorisation from parents but it was the school who were not happy about them attending the project unaccompanied. |
| 24 January 2002 |
| I emailed the 2 teachers to ask for emailed confirmation of names for Monday's session. Steve replied on the Monday with the names, no word from Homerton. |
| 28 January 2002 |
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It has become quite clear that leaving recruitment in the hands of the teachers doesn't always work. I kinda knew this from the start but was seduced into believing that Homerton were going to supply a hand picked bunch. Tonight only 2 girls came along from Haggerston with no word at all from Homerton. Kayla , Luwana and I carried on with sesh 1 and had a profitable 2 hours. They were very enthusiastic and seemed from the start to be making the project their own. Sesh 1 notes are available. By the end they had thrashed out a plan of the broad content and what the first page would look like. With the use of a flipchart, they presented their ideas to both Steve and Jody. |
| 29 January 2002 |
| When I rang Christy at Homerton she was very apologetic about not contacting me. I suggested that whatever the year assembly was going to be the next day (Wed) I would be there to address the boys personally at 8.45am. She agreed and informed me it would be Year 9. |
| 30 January 2002 |
| And so it was, I sold the project in a way that I thought would ring their bell and got a round of applause. Good opening lines were:
"Is there anyone here who has never surfed the internet ?" Resounding silence all round - and I had their attention. Stressing in no particular order: About 30 odd students expressed interest. Marvellous. |
| 4 February 2002 |
| Ended up with the 2 Haggerston girls and 8 boys from Homerton this afternoon. So the assembly had been a successful way of recruiting students. Sesh 2 consisted of a recap of last week and starting to research bike sites……Jody gave a brief intro to the software - Adobe - Go Live - and they had a practice. They seemed to take to the idea very well.
Interestingly the focus / interest of the younger Year 7 girls waned this week as they perhaps saw "their project" being hijacked from under their noses by a posse of Year 9 boys. The mix of ages will be interesting to watch…. albeit that it happened by chance. The atmosphere was quite tense & awkward when they were all being addressed as a group, predictably this subsided when split into pairs and given a topic to research. Research was an enjoyable activity as they were given relatively free reign to surf the internet on a fast connection. Though I would suggest a few URL's to get them started and write up newly discovered useful URL's on the whiteboard for everyone to check. There should be some rules outlined for those students who continually abuse the use of the internet for their own purposes during lesson time….i.e. to collate ring tones, play games or otherwise… ENVRIRONMENT / D.I.Y / SAFETY / COMMUNITY / BODY The site structure in terms of files and folders was established and each topic was given a separate folder in which to put images and html pages. Students were told where to put their work and encouraged to SAVE SAVE SAVE the whole time ! It's useful to have all students looking for images from the same source URL eg. www.google.com (images section) so that one acknowledging footnote somewhere on the website will suffice for copyright purposes. |
| OBSERVATIONS |
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The rest of the project went reasonably smoothly and I would make the following general observations: · Mixing girls and boys works well but ensure same age groups |
This Page was last update: Friday, July 5, 2002 at 12:43:57 PM
This page was originally posted: 7/5/2002; 11:00:45 AM.
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