I will be one of the leaders and coordinators of the school’s Journal Club. Specifically, I am in charge of the Early Childhood section of the journal. I will also be helping to set up a totally new way of delivering the Journal Club to the audience by taking part in making the school’s Journal Club go online in a new section on the school’s website. l The work of leading, organizing and conducting my section will be done by trimesters and the leadership will require monthly or even weekly work. I will also be part of the team which instruct and guide those in a grade below us on how to continue on with the Journal Club once we leave the school.
- Undertaken new challenges Since we will totally be reshaping the Journal Club, this is a big challenge for us because we are dealing with a really important club for the school that manages plenty of articles and writers, and that has to meet deadlines! Therefore, due to the amount work that has to be done, size of the club and time we will be facing a big challenge
- Planned and initiated activities Most of the work that the leader have to take care of at the Journal Club is planning things, such as articles, sections on the journal, new ideas and topics.
- Worked collaboratively with others Since the Journal Club demands a lot of work, we all have to work together in order for it to get done efficiently and in time. This is especially important for the management team.
- Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities This activity requires lots of responsibility and effort, because the school strongly relies on the Journal Club to deliver important news. Therefore, the management team will have to show perseverance because we can’t quit nor procrastinate because we have to organize everything, and commitment because we will have to put lots of effort into the club in order for it to be successful.
Developed new skills I will be developing leadership skills (because I will be one of the journal club leaders) and organizational skills (because I will also have to manage a section and writers).
WHY
Explain why you want to carry out this project, what prompted you to embark on this and what you wish to accomplish.
My main interest on carrying out this project is manly because I want the school’s Journal Club (held by students) to be a reputable and important organization of the school. I believe that it is an opportunity for students to voice their opinions and views as well as inform others about the interesting learning that is going on throughout all grades. I find that many of us are constantly thinking about our own assignments in our own grades to realize that we are not just individuals learning, but that we are part of a larger community of learners. With the Journal Club, I hope to create a stronger community spirit. I also think that it going online will help this message spread. I also want to improve its importance, organization, efficiency, functionality and size. I want to improve the Journal Club in all of this ways, and I personally think that I can contribute a lot and be a key part of this change.
HUMAN CAPITAL
Who will take part on this project and roles.
The top part of the human capital is the management team and section coordinators. This group is composed by Sara Jata (Early Childhood), Xabier Merino (Lower School), Jorge Garcia (General Section + Literary Corner + ICT newsletter), Ian Garcia (Upper School), and myself (IB + CAS & ICT web). The sections each are in charge of may vary however from trimester to trimester.
Below us are the writers, translators photographers and editors. These are in charge of preparing the articles that will be posted and are the mayor part of the club.
As an external part of the Journal Club are the school director and our CAS Coordinator, who revise all of the Final Drafts before they are posted to the public.
The Journal Club has to follow the hierarchy because the organization is really important and is really difficult to maintain on the club. However, the atmosphere is not really bossy (from the management team) and most of the directors are also writers.
STEP BY STEP
- Explain in detail HOW, WHEN and WHERE you will carry out the project. Explain the context (When coordinating with another institution, please provide its description, aims, targeted population, context, etc.)
- Describe sustained time of planning and implementation, the manner in which you incorporated collaboration and how/with whom you collaborated, as well as address any thinking you've done about enduring outcome of the activities.
The process is as the following:
- All of the directors of the Journal Club meet for 45 minutes after school at the beginning of each trimester (No specific dates). If more time is required (usually) we met the next day also. During this meeting the management team performs several crucial tasks. First of all a section is assigned to each leader. Second, some of the articles that will be posted will be assigned (only some because most of the article topics will appear throughout the trimester. Then each writer, photographer, translator, and spell-checker is assigned to a section leader. Fourth, any general and important organizational or general issues of the club are discussed and solved at this meeting also. (All of the topics and assignations addressed in the meeting are written in the club’s Google Drive folder so that each leader can later access the file for the information.
- Each section leader assigns and prompts his/her writers, photographers and spell-checkers with an article (from the list decided on the first meeting or a new article topic that appeared) by sending an email to the writer using the Journal Club’s email ONLY. On the email the topic, title, deadline, grade and a description of the desired article must be specified.
- The writers, photographers, translators and spell-checkers of each article have to collaborate together to complete the article within the deadline. If they have any doubts they should send an email to the journal clubs email. If this happens, the section leader of the article should attend his/her club members and tag the email in with his section name.
- When an article is finished it has to be sent to the Journal Club’s email. At this point the leader of the section of this article has to tag this article with the section tag and mark the article as completed on the task list (the one written on the first meeting). He also has to notify the ICT department so that the article is DIRECTLY uploaded to the Journal Club’s website hosted on the school’s website and put on another folder for the trimestral publication.
- When all of the articles are completed the ICT department creates a PDF draft of the trimestral publication using the articles saved in the folder and this is reviewed by all of the Journal Club directors.
- It is then sent to the director and our CAS coordinator for approval and revision.
- Any changes suggested are made until the club has the final approval. At this stage the final version is sent to the office and the Journal is published the last day of the trimester.
TIMING
Predicted Length of the project (include time planning, thinking, contacting people, collaborating with others, logistical details, as well as the actual time and frequency of implementation activities)
The total length from the planning to the delivery is a whole trimester. However, the first draft is usually finished a week before publishing and all articles are scheduled to be submitted a month before the end of the trimester. The planning stage usually lasts a week.
NEEDS & RESOURCES
List the needs or points you need to take care of before the project. Think of those things that need to be in place before the project takes place.
- Meeting Area (library)
- Computers (personal)
- Access to Journal Club’s website
- Access to Journal Club’s email
- Writers, translators, photographers, revisers
- Ability to communicate with all conventional club members
- Access or permission to ask for information
- Schoo'l permission to publish
DURING THE ACTIVITY:
OCTOBER
This month Borja and I presented to the Upper School the intentions and vision we had for the journal club. The existing one consists in a newsletter that goes out every trimester through email to the parents. As we will be part of the team taking over the journal club in the next school year, we thought be could change it up a little and incorporate an online version of the journal which is updated more often. Even though this will start next school-year, we wanted to raise awareness of its existence and then see how many potential participants there are. I feel like the presentation went well and working with Borja on this presentation was just a small sneak-peak of what it will be like working with him on the real thing and I have to say I am looking forward to working collaboratively with him and the rest of the team. Also, we were showing that we are committed to this activity as we were getting a head start on it to let people know about it.
JANUARY
This month Borja and I had a meeting with Gema and Konstantina who are the current leaders of the Journal Club. We will be taking over during the third term following their model (so without the online journal edition) but we will have to organise it to fit our needs with the new team, since they are 12th graders and won't be here this term. Therefore, we thought it would be a good idea for all of us to collaborate together on the newsletter of the second term to understand better the process and organizational structure of the present journal club so that we get used to the job we will have to do later. We were given the password to the journal club gmail account so we could start looking at how they had been working in the past. We also talked about planning and initiating the online version as well as possible new sections of the newsletter. We thought of an IB talk section which wouldn't be published in this edition but perhaps in the future we could use this section. I created a template to see kind of what it would be like.
FEBRUARY
This month I did pretty much what every participant in the journal club does which is write an article, in both english and spanish. I wrote an article about the chinese exchange that happened at our school. Even though I have done this part of the journal club since a few years ago, it was interesting to have access to the ASB Journal Club Gmail account and this way, I could see exactly what Gema and Konstantina were doing and how they were organizing the whole process of preparing the newspaper. This allowed me to become aware of what to expect in the future and also think about what improvements we could make to make the process smoother and less hectic. I showed that I am committed to this activity but regulalry looking at the account, not to make any modifications but just to see what was going on and also because I sent in my article on time because now, more than ever, I understand how annoying and difficult it can be for them to keeo everything straight.
Here is the article I wrote: (the english version)
From February 1st to the 13th, we had 9 Chinese students from the Chengdu Foreign Language School at ASB. A few students knew them from when they went to China last year but nevertheless, it was an enriching experience for all of us. China is such a foreign country, one we know hardly anything about, especially when it comes down to the normal, everyday life of teenagers like us. We went on several excursions to cultural sites but the most touching moment, at least for me, was the assembly we had at the end. We all shared our experiences and talents; we learned to appreciate the differences between our cultures and made many of us realize what good friends we had become in such a short time. Special thanks to Ms. Allison, Sara Chen, Jim Wang, Roberto Santos, host families and buddies who contributed to making this experience possible.
MARCH
This was the month that the 2nd trimester edition of the newsletter came out and we had to get everything together. As part of the runner-up team for the leadership of the journal club I had to take on some responsibilities that I hadn't expected before. But from this, I learned that when you are in charge of something, you are always going to have more work than you expect and therefore, time-management and organization are key to carrying this out well. Even though for this term I was just a normal participant, I still took on the role as chief editor for the english version. This was a lot of work and it had to be done in a short time-period because the newsletter has to be sent out in just a matter of days. However, I really took the time to carry out this task to the best of my ability because now I feel more responsible than ever about what is being published in the newsletter. I feel like the newsletter is a reflection of the school and having grammar and spelling mistakes in it would not be good so this is why I really care about this job. It sure was a challenge though, even though it wasn't that much content there were a lot of things to correct and it took up long hours. I got it done by the end and I felt good about it.
APRIL
This is the month when the most planning took place so far. We had to initiate the new leadership and there are 5 of us on the team: Xabier, Jorge, Ian, Borja and I. We worked on a new organizational structure and decided that the best system for us would be for each of us to have one section of the newsletter (upper school, lower school, early childhood...) and then each of us have a set number of assigned writers.
MAY
crunch time send emails get articles ethical and deadlines
EVIDENCE OF PROJECT:
December 2014: http://www.asob.es/docs/201412/newsletter_18_12_14_eng.pdf
December 2015: http://www.asob.es/docs/201512/newsletter_18_12_15_eng.pdf
AFTER THE ACTIVITY:
STUDENT INITIATED PROJECT FINAL REFLECTION
I feel that this project was a success in many ways,
but it is also true that there are a lot of things we could have done better to
improve the quality of our work. One thing that we succeeded in was coming up
with a much easier and practical system of organizing the assignment of
articles to writers than there was with the previous Journal Club management
team. We came up with a better way to keep all of us members of the management
team informed of the status each one of us was in with our assignments by
creating a collective Google Docs. We also included a template for writing
emails so that all our writers would receive coherent information and that way
avoid misunderstandings and discrepancies in communication. In doing these
things, I think I mostly achieved the learning outcome of developing the
leadership skills I sought out for because of the great responsibility that I
had in carrying out this task. Deadlines were respected in the most part by our
writers, making it possible for us to release the newsletter on the day we
proposed. Being in charge of the Early Childhood section in the most part (although
I did take over Upper School once) made me communicate with teachers from lower
grades; teachers I don’t tend to have too much contact with and this further
improved my communication skills and made me work collaboratively with those
with whom I don’t usually work with. There were problems however and I think it
mostly has to do with one aspect of the Club: the editing. In the past, there
used to be writers, editors, photographers and translators. As part of the new
management team, I was part of the decision-making process of getting rid of
all these roles in order to maximize our writers’ value. We thought that by
making everyone be a writer, we would achieve more articles as well as avoid
confusion in this extensive chain of command which was implanted before
(writers would send their articles to their editors, some editors would then
send them back to their writers, other to the journal club email, it was
unclear which article was edited and which wasn’t…. it was a bit of a mess) We
did achieve to avoid this, however, the editing was not to its best quality because
it was up to us, the managers to closely check each one of our articles for
mistakes in both languages, and some of us even had to translate articles while
still managing our section. This caused there to be some mistakes in the
articles which meant that the online version of the journal club had to be
hidden from the school website as to avoid bad reputation for the school. We
were quite let down; it was not our proudest moment but reflecting back on it,
it is clear that we should have anticipated this when we decided to take on all
of the editing responsibility ourselves. Finally though, I am pleased with the
work I did with my group because despite the difficulties, I think that such an
ambitious project as the Journal Club is part of a learning process. Those previous
to us started it from which we benefitted, we incorporated a better organizational
system by creating a collective Google Drive with email templates and
assignment charts, got the school to create an @asob.es domain email account
for the journal club to facilitate communication, and an initiative to make the
Journal go online which was active for a several months all from which those
after us will be able to continue, having learnt from our mistakes. My goal was
to give students a voice and have the journal club be a more active and present
force in the school, which I do believe we achieved as a whole because of the
above accomplishments.
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