Day+6+-+Working+Hard

__OUTREACH CREW__:

 * Last week the students and I (Sam) worked together to write an email template to send out to various members of the community to request aide with our progress for two purposes: To request aide in the form of actual donations, and secondly to request aide in the form of advertising our cause. A sample of the letter the students wrote can be read below:

Dear Friends, We are third grade students from P.K. Yonge and we are working on a project called “Small Hands, Big Hearts”. This Project’s goal is to help children and their families here in Gainesville by providing them with donations of various kinds. As members of the Outreach Crew, it is our job to reach out to our community to request donations to help those in need (see attached donations list). If there’s any way you could provide us with donations of any kind, we would greatly appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time to read this email. We appreciate any help at all.

Sincerely, Team Small Hands, Big Help

Donations List:

ANY DONATION will be accepted: - Food: of any kind - Hygienic products (tooth brushes, hair brushes, deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo, soap etc.) - Miscellaneous children's items (toys, socks, shoes, clothes etc.) - School supplies - Etc.


 * I sent this form, as well as the form for the request for advertisement out to the list of community businesses and organizations the students compiled weeks previous, and got a few great responses. Most notably:


 * Arbor House: ** A community based program that focuses on empowering single parents and provides them with aide to help them help themselves improve their current situations. They responded and are THRILLED that our "Small Hands, Big Hearts" team thought of them as a means of connecting the actual donations with those children and families in need. The best news of all, is that they are more than willing to take any and ALL types of donations the students collect, including: clothes, school supplies, furniture, toys, food and more.
 * KISS 105.3 Radio Station:** Is excited to help motivate kids solve world problems early on in life, and is happy to provide our project with some sort of radio advertising as the project DONATION FRIDAYS come closer. The students were ECSTATIC to hear that they may be selected to broadcast their own voice over the radio :). It's fun to see them light up!


 * Today's progress in our class meeting focused on the students creating flyers to copy and distribute around the community in the up coming weeks. We had a mini lesson discussing what type of information is essential on an advertisement, and how we can best incorporate them in our own flyers.

__WEBSITE CREW:__
//**Today (March 16)**//
 * the website crew worked on editing the website more by adding new pages, changing up pictures, and filling in new information
 * We (Rai & Abbey) had the kids rotate through three different groups
 * Abbey's Group: edited the website & added new information - Check it out!
 * Rai's Group: researched links & additional resources for the website (i.e. other charities, the Arbor house website, the PK website, etc.)
 * The kids came up with the following links:
 * @http://www.marchofdimes.com/
 * Parklands Rehabilitation and Nursing Center
 * P. K. Yonge Home Page
 * The International Fund for Animal Welfare
 * @http://www.animalshelter.org/donate.asp
 * The Arbor House
 * Free Republic - We may need to evaluate this one.
 * American Cancer Society
 * The National Coalition for the Homeless
 * Ronald McDonald House
 * Goodwill
 * Shand's Children's Hospital
 * Fannie Mae's Help the Homeless Program
 * Independent Group: used a rubric to critique the current website and make suggestions to improve
 * The results of the critique:
 * media type="custom" key="8727548"


 * //Next Week (March 23)//**
 * Continue editing the website
 * Add additional links/resources
 * Finish editing the unfinished pages
 * Finalize the design/colors
 * Input any photos/videos onto the site
 * More links/resources?
 * Facebook/Twitter? (The kids //really// want this on Facebook)

__NEWS CREW:__
Today was so productive in terms of editing footage! Finally, we (Sarah) got the computers to work and the editors were able to pick through the film and choose portions that they want to make a part of the video. They were able to select footage and piece together new sections to tie transitions in the video together, so it was very interesting and fun. The on-camera personalities had a little more struggles today. All but two of them were called away for lice issues, so this wasn't as great. However, they were able to film 3 interviews and another explanation of the project. The graphic designers were also very creative and produced a number of interesting title bars that they will be able to add onto the video later.

//Next time:// For next time, we will be focusing our efforts on adding more pieces to the video. I will work on adding the components that were worked on today all together and present a semi-finished product to the class. We will have a critiquing discussion, where we can talk about parts of the video that work and ones that need to be changed. Our biggest goal is to interview a big part of the outreach crew and get a better idea of what they have been working on and their goals. The news crew seems a bit disconnected from actually being aware of the community aspect of the project so far, so I really want them to research and find out what our ultimate goals are.