End of a Semester

Last week is suppose to be our last week of service. However, the middle schools had their Spring Break that week so we did not have the pleasure of working with them at that time.

Overall, I feel as though the program could be so much better. Admittedly, it is a new program and Cluster Challenge is in need of some experience as a service-learning program itself, considering it has only been a program since Fall 2009. It is also new to the middle schools as well, which makes it all the more disorganized.

Despite this, I believe that I did gain enough of an experience to consider this program adequate for connecting what I have done at the service site to the Bentley classroom.

There is the obvious connection that as a Bentley student, I was able to provide what I learned about layouts to middle school students who were looking into building simple websites for their school projects. However, I was not limited to website building: I have also dabbled teaching teachers and students Microsoft Office tools such as Power Point and Excel.

Thinking critically, communications with the teachers regarding web 2.0 tools can be correlated to creating code for a website. If the code is written incorrectly, the website cannot be implemented correctly as well. This can be applied to the relations with teachers: communicate with them insufficiently when teaching them web 2.0, then the teachers won't be able to implement the tools to their students.

Having done this program for both semesters, I have seen the dramatic changes between last semester and this semester. It has gotten more organized because we have accepted less 4th credits and gained more Project Managers. Before this semester, we have only worked with one school. Now we work with both middle schools in the city.

There continues to be many aspects of the program that needs to be improved upon, but Cluster Challenge maintains its purpose to spread technology to the middle schools.

Last Time Around

It's that time of year again that we must end this semester's service. Our last week is technically tomorrow, but due to the middle schools having their break for all of next week, it was Bentley's last week to attend service.

The day we had service, my group and I had to come two hours early due to scheduling issues for that specific day.

I was able help students with their history/geography projects using Windows Media Player. It was a bit annoying that the school computers were limited when it comes to certain website access. I offered to obtain some music that a student wanted to use for their South Korean Project after service hours because of these limitations.

Next week I will access what I have done at the middle school and tie it into my current classroom activities.

Two weeks later

Last week the school was on vacation for Good Friday so we were not able to go the site.

This week I had the pleasure of conversing to Lucy who works in the McDevitt Middle School as a Library Teacher. We discussed several topics from the reality of technology to the digital divide. It was very informative talking with her because she possesses such knowledge of web 2.0 tools, surprised me to be quite honest, that it made me think about how I can get other teachers to have such a passion for web 2.0 or at least be as open to the concept as she is. It went to that extent that she also gave me a bit of research to decrease the digital divide that Bentley Students have with the teachers. I am hoping to propose this to the coordinator of the program.

She created a website just a couple of days ago for the McDevitt Library which can be viewed here: McDevitt Middle School Library.

Right now I am making it my job to find ways to make the program more organized and more understanding of how the students and teachers feel about the program at both McDevitt and Kennedy. Knowing this, Project Managers like myself can brainstorm as to how to make Cluster Challenge a better program for middle school teachers, middle school students, and the Bentley volunteers. This way, we can also figure out how to implement the web 2.0 tools that teachers would like to see in their students projects more efficiently and effectively.