And We're Off!

L@TCH got a grant from the Abell Foundation and we think we've found someone who is interested in helping us evaluate the program, this means we can really put L@TCH into motion. My supervisor, Gayle describes it like someone has suddenly opening the gates and we are off running!

I've written some web content, our website is now finished: everyfamilyconnected.org
My supervisor and I have been busy meeting with the school coordinators/principles to discuss how many students will be needing computers. Our goal is to distribute 75 per school. We may start looking for another school because we want to distribute 500 computers overall. We've also drafted a plan concerning how we will implement the program. I've made a checklist to help the schools we are working with stay organized, now if only could stay more organized myself!

Organizing the information I need to know about each school is becoming difficult but I'm definitely getting better at it and finding different ways to keep it all straight. My supervisor just asked one of her web developers to make us a database which will be very useful in this regard. Also, we now have a L@TCH blog and our updates (once we write them) will eventually show up on the website. One thing I have learned for certain, it takes time to get to know the organization you're working for, for them to get to know you and to figure out the ways you work well together.

We want to keep the teachers informed throughout the program so we can get their help and input but tracking down the school coordinators in order to schedule teacher meetings is no easy task. All the coordinators are wonderful people but also very busy people... We are in the process of drafting a survey for the teachers so that we can gauge how many home technology lessons they assign and how comfortable the students are with computers before and after the program. One of the teachers we met with said only three parents have emailed her all school year. I hope by May we can change that so it's every parent.

So far, everyone we've met with seems really excited about L@TCH starting at their school, now we've got a lot of work to do!

Comment from Bill Brown on October 22, 2010 - 2:51pm

Love the colors on the new website, and the font. Do you guys give out mainly refurbished computers or new ones that y'all buy?