Working away

    Well it's day two and I thought I'd better get around to doing a blog before Danielle comes to Grand Rapids to kick my butt.  :D

    I've basically been on the job for two weeks already. The Grand Rapids Community Media Center hired me as a contract worker for two weeks so I could get a head start. Get some training in before the school year started so I wouldn't be jumping in cold with students.

    I'm working mostly with an organization within the GRCMC called MoLLIE, short for Mobile Learning Lab for Information Education. One of the things we do is go into a few of the Grand Rapids Public Schools and teach students to make short videos based on something they are learning in class. Today we were at a special school here called Zoo School. It's for bright 6th graders and is a small school run at the John Ball Park Zoo.

    Even though my ex-girlfriend of 4 years had three kids and I've been a substitute teacher for the past 2 years, I was still nervous about going into the class today. But I didn't need to be. I worked with a great group of kids. That won't always be the case, I imagine, but it was agood way to start.

    So, altogether five of us went in to a class of 30 armed with video cameras, tripods, and microphones. We split into groups of six. Each group had three pairs that were working on a report for a particular animal. So all the students took turns behind and in front of the camera.

    On Thursday we do the same with a second group at the school. Then on Thursday we bring in the iBooks with their footage on them and they edit. There won't be a lot of editing to do this time around. We kept it very simple as we only have two hours per session with them.  

    Another thing I did today was work on surveys. We want to find out what kind of services our Community is interested in. So we made three surveys. One to take to the schools, one for non profit organizations that work with kids, and one for the general community. 

    These surveys will hopefully give us an idea of what type of new programming I can help the GRCMC and MoLLIE develope. I'm very excited to get that going. 

    Well, I think I'm running a bit long. So, I'll stop here.

Peace,

Richard.

P.S. I love that I can indent my paragraphs. 

Comment from cheryl jerozal on September 13, 2006 - 8:17am

sounds like a good start!

Comment from Rebecca White on September 13, 2006 - 12:52pm

Good to hear your "first" few days are going well!