community service learning project options

A couple of students commented about the limited number of community partner project options. This is an ongoing "problem" - if there are too many choices, students are overwhelmed by the choices. With limited choices, some students feel they don't have choices that interest them.

Also included in the guidelines, is the option of local community organizations - if you are currently volunteering for community organization, continue your work by adding a community service learning component.

The emphasis on online community service fits with the course and its objectives - flexible, web-based, not limited by location or time to do the work.For many students, this is the only option they have for community service learning work.

Although not explicitly stated, you are always welcome to ask about other organizations, either online or local.

I appreciate your feedback and suggestions. Online community service learning is evolving and we are learning new ways to work with community partners where ever they are.
.

community service learning - getting started

Once you have selected the Community partner to work with with, and have looked through the information about the actual projects that you will be working on, you can complete and submit your proposal.

The outline for the proposal is provided as a series of prompt questions in the Proposal section of the Community Service guidelines. Answer the questions as they apply to your community partner and the work you will be doing for your project.

The proposal is submitted as assignment - Community Service Learning project PROPOSAL.

If you select the California History Center as your Community partner, there are a couple of projects already outlined and in progress. You may decide to continue the work that has already been started. You can add to and expand the resources for any of these projects. Wiki pages already exist for each of these projects. You will be adding to what is there already.

If you have another idea that is appropriate to the California History Center, but not specifically identified as a project, please let me know. Some additional review, wiki page set up and direction from California History center staff will be needed.
.

Community Service Learning - update

There was some confusion about the Community Service Learning assignment but thanks to all the questions, most of you are starting do work for the community partner organizations.

Not sure where to find the details? Look in Module 3 for the Community Service Learning discussion forum. There is a discussion topic for each community partner project. These are not group projects, but there are several students in the class working on each community project.

Yes, the proposal was due in week 3. However, there was some confusion, so there will be no late deduction.

If you have questions about the community service learning assignment, please ask.
.

sample books

Tar Heel Reader http://tarheelreader.org/

This is a very ambitious list of books. I'm sure they will be greatly appreciated.

Did you check to see if there are any books on these subjects already in the Tar Heel Reader collection?

I suggest that you do one or two complete books first. That way you see the whole process start to finish.

A couple of things to watch out for when you do your sample books:

• words per page - there isn't room for many words before they fall off the page.
• finding pictures to match words - allow some flexibility on pictures. It can be really time consuming to find a specific picture that you need to accompany pre-written text.
• start with pictures - it may be easier to find a series of pictures on a theme, then write or arrange the text to go with the pictures.

If your sample books work out like you plan, then you know how many you can complete.
.

Half way

The community service summaries that have been submitted are great! Thanks to everyone for all the effort on behalf of the community partner organizations.

The Global Fellows are really pleased with the contributions made by DeAnza students. The Tech is very appreciative of the volunteering by CIS2 students. I don't have personal contact with Project Gutenberg but they regularly express their thanks for their volunteers in public forums.

So we are at the half-way point in the course. The topics become more theoretical. There are several very interesting activities and discussions coming up that will help you appreciate the impact of computers and the internet on society. I hope that you will enjoy the reading and the coursework about these complex issues.
.

Community service project due

How is your community service project going?

Have you completed your 12 hours of service work? Have you logged your time and what you worked on?

Have you completed and submitted your proposal outlining the work that you were planning to do?

When you have completed the work, complete and submit the Community service SUMMARY quiz. This is how your community "service" ties in with "learning" about the impact on society. Think about what you did as just one person. Your work and the work of hundreds of thousands of others has a huge benefit to society.

Look around the Global Fellows wiki pages.
http://thetechvirtual.org/global-fellows/wiki-home-page/

Several CIS2 student have already added to the wiki pages, either through direct edits or as comments. The information from the comments is being added to the wiki page as the pages are written and edited collaboratively.

This is exciting work that is being done. It will benefit others beyond the class and the community partners. This is important work you are doing for the global community.
.

Community service - Summary

The deliverable for the community service project is the "quiz"
Community service SUMMARY QUIZ- instructor graded

Look through the quiz and see what you need to complete your response.

There are a number of questions to answer to summarize and analyze your experience. Your log of your work hours is required and is included as part of this submission.
.

Community service and work

Thanks to everyone who is making progress on their community service projects. We are starting to see some things happening. I really appreciate the time and effort from several folks who had to struggle with new procedures, instructions needing clarifications, and access restrictions. Things are getting better but they could be better still. So thanks for your questions and suggestions. I really appreciate all your help.

Several students have selected Project Gutenberg. This is a good project that benefits people all over the world. It isn't as creative or collaborative as the Global Fellows of The Tech Virtual projects, but that's ok.

The discussions about the Crime topic last week were very interesting. I hope that you are more aware of the "opportunities" for crimes and criminals as well as for law enforcement.

This week we will be looking at many different aspects of work and jobs that can be impacted by computers and the internet. The book emphasizes the negative effects. Keep a more balanced view and think about all the positive indirect effects as well. It is more difficult to see these secondary benefits, but they are very important when considering the impact on society as a whole.
.

online group projects

Q: This is serious question that I have been asking you continously. I do not see my group to do work together, in my case , I think it is individual work. So, how can you grade the credit.?

A: And I have answered this question each time you ask it.

The whole point is that you can do group work without meeting! Many very interesting and important projects are being done by people who never meet in person and never even communicate "live" in chats or instant messaging.

You track your own time working on the community service project. It is an "honor system" - I have to trust that you record your time and tell me the truth about the time you work.

When you complete the community service learning summary quiz, you will include the log of your community service hours, along with other information about the project and your work. I grade this quiz.
.

community service learning - weekly status reports

Add your weekly status report as a comment.

Provide your initials, the partner organization and project, a description of the work you have done, and the number of hours worked.
.

Project Gutenberg

If you aren't working on your community service learning project now, you need to get started.

• Complete a total of 12 hours of service for the community partner organization.
  
• In addition to the project work for the community partner, submit a proposal following the outline in the Guidelines.
  
• When you have completed the service hours (12 hours minimum), complete the "quiz" as the summary and analysis of your work.
  
• Weekly status reports are submitted as well.
  

Still confused? Can't figure out how to get going on community service learning with either The Tech Virtual or Global Fellows projects?

How about this - a nice straight forward, robust online community service project used by 10,000s to digitize public domain texts for free and open distribution via the internet.

Project Gutenberg

http://www.gutenberg.org

There are over 25,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog. The Project Gutenberg collection was produced by tens of thousands of volunteers. You can help. Distributed Proofreaders provides a web-based method to ease the conversion of Public Domain books into e-books. By dividing the workload into individual pages, many volunteers can work on a book at the same time, which significantly speeds up the creation process.

During proofreading, volunteers are presented with a scanned page image and the corresponding OCR text on a single web page. This allows the text to be easily compared to the image, proofread, and sent back to the site. A second volunteer is then presented with the first volunteer's work and the same page image, verifies and corrects the work as necessary, and submits it back to the site. The book then similarly progresses through two formatting rounds using the same web interface.

Once all the pages have completed these steps, a post-processor carefully assembles them into an e-book, optionally makes it available to interested parties for 'smooth reading', and submits it to the Project Gutenberg archive.

• Register with the site as a volunteer.
• Read the introductory email you receive and the Beginning Proofreader's FAQ.
• Confirm your registration, sign in, choose a project, and try proofreading a page or two!

community service progress 2009.04.29

We are off to a slow start but things are picking up. So much is new for all of us, but we are quick learners...

It is always challenging when launching a new program with lots of new elements, especially when the process is complex. Collaborating online is new for pretty much everyone. Now we have made it even more interesting - adding two new community partners - The Tech Virtual and Santa Clara University.

We are also using additional web functionality that is new to us. The Tech Virtual site management http://thetechvirtual.org/ is similar to Catalyst, but different in many respects.

Oh yes, and the projects are unlike anything that anyone has worked on in the past. Lots of new learning experience for students and the community partners and the instructor. But this is very real in life.

In the end, this will be so worth it. We are getting close to having the structure and communications in place to really get rolling on the project work. There is plent to do and time to do it. However, everyone really needs to get involved and get busy.

This has been somewhat frustrating for all, but it will be worth it. The projects will deliver considerable information and benefits to others around the world. This is how computers and the internet can contribute to society in a very big and positive way. And, you will have been part of it from the very beginning. That's exciting community service learning.

..link

Community Service MidTerm project

The Community Service Learning project has replaced the course Midterm project. In the past students spent at least 12 hours on their Midterm project. By replacing that with community service learning, all the effort and learning benefits the community as well as the student.

Many transfer colleges are now requiring or requesting the Community Service Learning credit which will be added to your transcript when you successfully complete your project. See the DeAnza Course Catalog for details - CIS2 is listed as one of the courses participating in the Civic Engagement program.

All the projects are online. Once the initial contact and coordination are established, you can do the project work on your own schedule - just like the rest of the course work for CIS.
.

where are you?

Q: i really need help on the online volunteering im a lil confused about it and would really appreciate it if u can help me because i don't want to fall behind

I know that there is a lot to this online community service learning assignment. All the information is provided. And this is part of the problem - there is a lot of information, so that the requirements and resources and process are clear.

However, you really have to read the information and take some action. Just telling me that you are confused doesn't help either of us.

What don't you understand?

Did you read the instructions?
http://www.wikieducator.org/DeAnza_College/CIS2/Community_service_learning_student_guidelines

Have you looked at the list of partner projects? Which one do you want to work on. There are lots to chose from.
http://www.wikieducator.org/DeAnza_College/CIS2/Community_service_learning_student_guidelines/SPRING_2009

Have you accessed The Tech Virtual Museum?
http://thetechvirtual.org

Have you accessed the Global Fellows area within The Tech Virtual?
http://thetechvirtual.org/global-fellows

Have you signed up for The Tech Virtual?
http://thetechvirtual.org/createMember


Global Fellows projects

Your SCU Global Fellows (SCU.GF) partners are coming online there. There are discussion forums setup so you can ask specific project related questions for the SCU.GF to respond and collaborate.
http://thetechvirtual.org/global-fellows


The Tech Museum projects

You need to sign up as a Tech volunteer (online form) as well as creating a Tech Virtual account.
http://www.thetech.org/about/volunteer/
Bob Ketner, Virtual Community Manager, The Tech Virtual rketner@thetech.org is waiting to hear from you.

Now, do you have questions?
.

privacy and signup profiles

Students are joining The Tech Visual Museum as volunteers to collaborate on community service learning projects. There is a form for creating a user profile. Interesting that we are also working on the topic of Privacy this week.

My advice when completing a signup form like this - provide as little information as is necessary. It is always a good idea to provide less, rather than more personal information. Honest and ethical organizations should respect your privacy and not require anything beyond some basic identification information.

In your profile, you filled in more information than is necessary. I suggest that you go back and take out any extra information.

A few items in the profile are required - they have an orange dot next to them. These are just enough to uniquely identify you without causing a serious privacy risk.

As a rule, I never fill out anything beyond the absolute minimum. I can always provide more information later, if there is a good reason to do so. This actually happened to me - I wasn't able to join one of the groups in Linked In because I hadn't provided enough information about my qualifications to be eligible to join the group. I had to make a choice - provide the information or be excluded. I chose the later. :o)
.

Community Service learning projects

On behalf of all the community partner organizations, thanks to everyone for your community service learning work.

The range of service work reflects interests and community engagement in person - daycare assistance, special projects in kids' schools, coaching high school athletes, and online - books for young adult new readers, illustrations for a not-for-profit worldwide training program.

I put together a list of links to student work online. These are public sites and will benefit partner organizations and visitors everywhere. Your contribution also helps promote the important work of these partner organizations in their global communities.

http://www.wikieducator.org/DeAnza_College/CIS2/Students_work#MidTerm_projects

If I missed links to your work, please let me know as I would like to keep this as a record of all the work contributed to these online community partners.

Thanks to everyone. Great work that is really appreciated. I hope that it made you feel good too.

books for new readers

Aleida has been hard at work creating books for new readers

• Visions of Space http://tarheelreader.org/2009/01/29/visions-of-space/"
• Curious are the Eyes http://tarheelreader.org/2009/02/01/curious-are-the-eyes/

Rajesh has also produced new books

• Indian Food http://tarheelreader.org/2009/02/04/indian-foods/
• Biography of Rachel McAdams http://tarheelreader.org/2009/02/04/biography-rachel-mcadams/

Illustrations of Community Service Learning

Check out Roy's wonderful illustrations.
http://meshmantra.blogspot.com/

These graphics were created as his Community Service Learning project. The work was "commissioned" by the Community Empowerment Collective.

Other artists had created illustrations of scenes of communities working together. The settings were African. Roy offered to provide another set of illustrations depicting people from his Indian background. He has captured the dress and culture in his versions.

Community Empowerment Collective creates, develops, produces and distributes training material and guidance aimed at community mobilisers, their trainers and their coordinators (managers) to promote the self reliance, development and strengthening of low income communities, with a focus on least developed countries, and in other low income areas.

The Community Empowerment training materials are available on the web. They are being translated into many languages already - notably English, German, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Italian. The training resource library is constantly expanding with translations being added. Current translation initiatives include African and Asian languages. Additional translation volunteers with proficiency and fluency in any language are always welcome to help expand access to the Community Empowerment through localization.

http://www.scn.org/cmp

CSL Project proposal

Remember - your project proposal must include

• Organization - name, web site link
• Volunteer information, help contact
• Brief outline of the organization, its mission
• How did you select this project?
• Who benefits from the work of this organization?
• What service will you be providing?
• Is training or preparation necessary / available?
• How does the organization and the community service learning experience addressing your interests or concerns for society?
• How does this community service learning work relate to the course?

Think of the proposal as an agreement for service. What are all things that might be important about this work as you were getting ready to do it? What will be important in the future when you are assessed against your proposed plan of work? There will be changes along the way, but it is important to have a clear statement of understanding at the beginning of the project.

You may think you will remember, but it will help everyone, especially you, if you write this all down at the beginning.
.

Writing for new readers

If you are working on the Tar Heel Reader project, keep in mind that you are writing for new readers. Many are young adults who have life experiences, but need to learn to read.

You can use your best judgment about suitable subjects, appropriate pictures, and text. There is a lot of information available about how to adapt your writing to help new readers. There are tools to help gauge the reading level of your writing.

As you come across ideas and suggestions for writing for new adult readers, please post them in this discussion. This will help build better guidelines for the Tar Heel Reader project. It will also help us build a library of resources for anyone interested in writing for new readers.

• The Beginning Literacy Framework
  
• Tar Heel Reader http://tarheelreader.org