March

Hooray for spring! Soon I'll be able to ride my bike to work! YES!

CTEP Paperwork
We CTEP CommonBonders (me, Ubah, Jessie, Jolene, and Barb) got our quarterly report, CTC Scan update and volunteer logs in. As of right now, the Skyline Computer Lab has 14 volunteers!! WOW. and we keep getting more! some of the volunteers only come in on Sundays, which means that I don't work with them. Oh, and Wendy (youth program VISTA) organized a volunteer appreciation pizza party! We both wrote personal notes on invitations for our volunteers because we really want them to come. It's Pizza Luce, I mean come on! No seriously though- the volunteers rock my world and I would like to be able to give them all something to show my appreciation. I'll have to think about it.

Skyline Projects
After searching the Internet far and wide for a safe kid's e-mail program, I've found gaggle.net. I'm working on planning computer lab activities for spring break (in early April) and I think one of the days we will have e-mail for kids. I want them to have e-mail, but the ones that have hotmail and yahoo keep swearing at each other. No good, plus all that nasty spam... The kids have all been asking about e-mail and they want to be able to keep in touch with their friends that move away, and former VISTAs too.

Also in spring break plans is a field trip to the Science Museum of Minnesota! I am helping Mikaela (youth program) plan it, so we went to scope out the exhibits early. I want the kids to have a chance to play with all the fun technology the museum has, so I put a few technology questions on the chaperone guide. Science really utilizes computers, and the kids love computers. It will be easy to get them excited about it!

I'm also excited about this Junior Achivement partnership that Skyline now has for the teens. It focuses on business and economics- something I've not really been interested in- but I think some of them could really get into it. There is also this online computer game called Titan where you have a business, and you have to make decisions about marketing, research, sales and all of that. That they could get into! Especially if they find out that the national competition is at Disneyworld in Florida! Anyway, JA has a bunch of curricula that Alicia is going to do once a week with the teens (lessons on life planning, career exploration, budgeting, resume writing...) and I thought that if there were computer components that I could have teen time in the lab so they can work on that.

Since there is no longer teen program Tues or Thurs, it's perfect! Our first teen program was Thursday, March 31. I don't think anyone came. They just want to play games and check e-mail. I told them that if teen computer goes well on Thursdays that we could have it on Tuesdays, and they seemed interested but... would rather slum around upstairs I guess! Something to strive for next month.

Cathedral
At Cathedral Hill I worked individually with one of the teens to do a resume- it was really cool because I just hopped online to find some resources for teen resumes and found loads of stuff on gotajob.com. I think the most helpful was the list of action words- orchestrated, enabled, and forecasted were my favorites.

Also, City Teen Legends (CHH teen computer club) is getting really cool- Faith and I try to plan an activity using the computers before the teens come down. We made an amazing PowerPoint trivia game for Women's History Month one week, and another week we made some Publisher posters for a bulletin board. The kids love both PowerPoint and Publisher; they like the clipart, backgrounds, and the animation features in PP.

We have plans for spring break to take the teens to the Minnesota Museum of Modern Art because they have an exhibit called interact/react that involves weird technological gizmos and computer generated images. I'm so excited!

The younger kids are keeping up with their plato, though I think they like the easy lessons much more than the ones that challenge them! And they like to work together a lot, something I haven't experienced as much at Skyline. Could it be that they are learning the benefits of collaboration?

Online Classes
I have also signed up for a couple online classes-Pa Chua, Nary and I are taking a class with the America Connects Consortium that is for learning how to search the web for educational resources and create curricula, and James and I are taking a Flash animation class. So far both of them seem really cool! More work than I thought it would be. And Flash is hard! Well, maybe it wouldn't be as difficult if I had a teacher there with me. I think learning a computer program online is not really my thing; I've found it very frustrating. It's rewarding, but since it takes me so long to figure things out the rewards seem few and far between. Oh well! I have lots more important things anyway :)

Events
3/14 Cathedral Hill had a Reading is Fundamental (RIF) event- where we give away free books to the kids. Faith and I had a couple of the teens in teen computer help us to make a trivia game with pictures and quotes of famous women for Women't History Month. The kids won prizes by answering the questions on the trivia game, and they all got their free books and ate cookies. We had 16 kids, and it went really well!

3/22 Skyline had its RIF event. Mostly I just made sure the kids went to pick up their books and that they didn't leave them in the lab.

Conferences
3/23 Jeff, Linda, new Megan and I went to the U of M lecture about the Digital Future. by Dr. Ismail Serageldin, the director of Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. The lecture was amazing- he talked about the technological obstacles to resources for developing countries, and also about "hubs" of access- like his library. He talked about the role of libraries in bridging the digital divide- it really reminded me of what a librarian at the Digital Junction Conference in December had said about the people being the key to technology literacy. It was a very inspiring lecture and it made me feel like I was connected to a whole array of people bridging the digital divide in multitudes of ways with various tools. The work that I do in low-income and new immigrant communities of a developed country is connected to the work that Dr. Serageldin is doing for his entire developing country. Cool!

InterCorps Council
3/3 ICC met at the state capitol and we had a chance to meet with State Rep. Tom Rukavina and he talked about the State House and his role in the legislative proccess. We met with Jeannie Fox, the Deputy Public Policy Director for the MN Council of non-profits and former AmeriCorps VISTA member, and she talked about the lobbying and advocating process. We met with Joanna Dornfeld, a communications/media specialist for Housing Minnesota, about the role of media in legislative change. It was a very informative and really interesting to talk to people who make change in their real jobs!

CTEP Training
3/11 We had our usual training at Mpls Urban League. We did a check-in activity, we formed committees and we created blogs.
I am the head of the Blog/Newsletter/Reflection Committee; it's me, Nary and Joe. We decided that we needed a member directory right away. We also have talked about a newsletter, reflection activities for people's blogs, and an end of the year compilation that CTEP members can take with them when their service is over. Like a yearbook.

3/25 Wow what an awesome training!!! I love how the Corps is coming together on a more personal level these days... we seem really comfortable talking about pretty much anything from work "opportunities" (Jeff's word for "challenges") to bodily functions. Our whole meeting seemed pretty up-beat and supportive, and we got things done. Because we're in AmeriCorps! I think after next time the committees will really be off the ground, we're finally starting to get our sea legs for roles that the committees play within CTEP and our greater service.
Linda and Rosalind of the Volunteer Mobilization Committee had an amazing presentation of the volunteer hub- a great resource for linking potential volunteers with CTCs or projects that need volunteers. http://www.technologypower.org/volunteers.html
So much to be done!

Personal Note
I love activities that pull me back a little and keep the big picture in perspective. Like Dr. Serageldin's lectures, and corps days. It's so easy to become captured and frustrated by your everyday work that I think I stay sane (okay, sane is relative!) by stepping outside and looking at what I'm doing and why. REFLECTION IS THE KEY TO SERVICE LEARNING!
Oh, and I'm excited because we have all these awesome new members! WOO HOO!