Book project

Chelsea Merrill

Michaela Burbank

Chris Smith

Tunisia Bey

Stephanie Acosta

 

Comm 304- Conference and Group Leadership

                While bringing my brother to school yesterday I saw something that did not settle very well with me.  I looked around the room and saw young students waiting for class to start and realized the generational gap that is slowly killing the success of our society.  I observed students teetering away on frivolous technology.  One students was watching an Iggy Azalea music video.  Another was playing a game that I can only guess that they outcome was how many people you could shoot in 30 seconds.  These students were glued to their iPhones and tablets.  So often we here about teenagers and adults being addicted to their phones, but these are 8 year olds.  Not a single child in this classroom had a book.  I saw a bookshelf in the corners that was full of literacy.  Unfortunately, it sat there solemnly collecting more dust than an antique shop. “Why weren’t these students reading?” I thought to myself.  I reminisced on the days that I spent countless hours with my nose in a book.  I’m not sure at what point childhood pastime switched from reading to texting, but I knew one thing for sure, lack or reading was becoming a huge problem.

                It has come to my attention that the education system is lacking in many ways.  Graduation rates are plummeting.  Students are dropping out of high school and college like it’s the Huger Games.  Lower graduation rates lead to a less educated workforce.  How can we expect our economy to thrive if we don’t have well qualified professionals in important fields?

                Reading does more than just entertain children.  It teaches the basic fundamentals for critical thinking and applied analysis.  Reading books provides children with the building blocks of becoming self- aware, competent members of society. We cannot expect our children to learn basic communication skills and rational thinking if they spend their days filling their spongent minds with crap. Psychologist stress that young children are very venerable to the world around them.  They observe everything and apply it.  Therefore, if they see crap, they will learn crap.  If they see knowledge, they will learn knowledge. 

1.                   Putting books in the hands of children is one of the best things that we can do for their future and our own.  By educating children at a young age and teaching them critical thinking skills, we will be giving them the tools that they need to successful future members of society.  It has also come to my attention that not all students have access to the resources for education.  That is why my group members and I participated in a book drive.  To help guarantee that all children have access to educational materials.  Below is a link to a video that my group and I created to showcase just how important books are to our children.  If you have any questions or are looking for ways to get involved please comment below.

 

 https://youtu.be/ZqA9v_-ufZQ 

What is community service?

Chelsea Merrill

Michaela Burbank

Chris Smith

Tunisia Bey

Stephanie Acosta

 

Comm 304- Conference and Group Leadership

 

Community service is important because it contributes to the success of a community.  So often people are concentrated on individual success. They may work hard for a desired outcome but the outcome is solely to support and benefit themselves.  The problem is that individual success is not what fuels a booming economy and supports a thriving population.  In order for us to succeed as a nation, we must succeed as a group.  That means that those of us who are capable and willing to help those of us who are less capable should.  We are told that we are all equal in this country, but that that doesn’t mean that we all have equal access to opportunity.  Due to conditions beyond control, many individuals are born into an underprivileged life.  Students aren’t always given a true education.  Veterans who risked their lives for us aren’t always able to get a job when they return.  Mothers who have become sick aren’t always able to afford to feed their children. It is our duty as privileged citizens to give back to those who are less than privileged.

 The community that you live in is more than just a zip code.  Your community is the heart and soul of your life.  Your community is home to your school, the place that you begin an education that will kick start the rest of your life.  Your community also provides you with parks that are not only environmentally necessary but are a spot that people can come together socially.  It is important not to take everything that your community gives you for granted. If you wish to succeed in life, you need the support of your community.

There are lots of different types of things that you can do as a form of community service.  There is the typical volunteering in a soup kitchen or planting a community garden. But there are so many other ways of community service that need to be done.  You can host a book drive in order to gather books for children that don’t have the same access to education equipment as you do.  You can spend time with at risk teens and pre-teens in an afterschool program.  You can find a way to encourage everyone in your community to recycle.  You can do any type of a fundraiser that you can use the profit from to make a healthy community.  The results are truly endless. Think outside of the box.  Discover an issue that you think is prevalent in your community, figure out a solution to that problem, and actively get involved to convince others to partake in your solution.  People get caught up in the everyday and they forget how important their contribution is to their community. Every little bit helps. If you have question or suggestions about how to get involved in your community, comment below.

 

Group 4's Video

Project Group Video (Week 8)
Group Members: Dayun Park, Aaron Willams, Chris Pasquarella, Jae Hack Jeong, Will Hunter

Process of Book Donation to Harlem Children's Zone

         During the entire semester, we were assigned one project which is donating books to non-profit organization. We worked together as a group and each team member put a lot of effort to donating books. Once a week, we gathered and discussed and planned what we should do for donation. We gathered books from diverse method, selected books, made a fund from goFundme, and finally sent it to the non-profit organization. To specify our process of book donation to Harlem Children' Zone, we made a funny 2.30 minute short video.
       
         The video starts with classroom and showed how we planned, brainstormed idea based on instruction, and how we contact with the organization. Then, we describe the process of collecting books which are going to academic department, faculty, and visiting dorms. Next, we show how we selected books from gathered books. Among selected book, we finally show how we sent those books to Harlem Children's Zone.
   
         In the video, some of group members (Dayun Park, Chris Pasquarella, and Jae Hack Jeong) became main actors and actress and also we included a young women who lives in Empire. Other members took turn and filmed the video, and they also edited and helped adding captions and credits. Overall, we made an interesting video which explains how we can successful in book donation. You can see the video under the link.

<iframe width="854" height="510" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_3r2QTUNdWo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Group 3's Video!

Today in class our group was responsible for creating a video in which we decided to outline our service learning project! The video includes us speaking about our assignment, what organization we chose to work with, the importance of service learning, and the conclusion. 

In order to put our video together, we had to go through several steps. Our team needed to decide upon a video idea then create a script. From there, we had to act, then edit the film. Next comes this final blog post.

The project and film were very fun and a great learning experience. To check out our video and learn more about what we've done this semester click the link below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG-fZXojTNc 

Video on smaller classrooms VS larger classrooms in UAlbany!

LARGE CLASSROOMS VS SMALL CLASSROOMS

BY: SPENCER, CAROL, COURTNEY, JESSICA AND CAITLYN

We chose smaller classrooms vs larger classrooms because it highlights many "arguments" on what is better for students in one video! It can be shown that from smaller classrooms it is easier for the professor to engage with students and for students to get a chance to get a more in-depth understanding of what is going on in the lecture by having more chances of asking questions, since there is less people in the classroom. We know that it is unrealistic for there to be no more large lectures, but we believe that a smaller classroom environment is a more effective way for students to learn.

Carol Filmed this video

Spencer and Courtney acted in this video

Caitlyn wrote the script for the video 

and I (Jessica) posted and wrote the blog!

To do this video we walked around campus to find different examples of small classrooms and large lecture centers for the location of the video!

Hope you enjoy!

How and Why to Donate Books - Group 1 Video

4/21/2015

Group 1 Members: Alex Moeller, Jessica Henkel, YoonKyung Cho, Jane Kim, Brianne Dolan, Jenna Dobin

To decide on our concept, we first thought of our initial thought process when we discussed how and why to donate books. This can also apply to donation and community service of any kind. We wanted to break down these steps into more broad detail in order to apply to others, and what message we wanted to send. We then decided on a script in which to communicate our message that best portrayed our vision. Jessica Henkel, Brianne Dolan, and Jenna Dobin communicated these messages in our video, and the message was recorded by Alexander Moeller. We took a desk from our classroom to use as a base prop, and used Alex's laptop to help us with our our new script. The script was essentially a rough rewrite of our blog post about how to get involved, because we felt that post was strong and needed not only emphasis, but more of a personal touch for those who wanted to get involved. We talked about how we donated books, what others can do to get involved, and the hashtags (#GreatBookGiveaway #DoYourPart #ProjectCommunity #OneselfOneCommunity) that others can use to follow our progress--or even show us their own! Alex is best at computers so he volunteered to edit our video together with the text that we needed. We then broke down our duties as group members for the other parts of the assignment.

Below is our group video for the Great Book Giveaway.

Project Group Video (Week 8)

4/21/2015

Group:
Kelly, Kassie, Oscar, and Carrie

Project Group Video (Week 8)

     Today our group was given the task to create a video explaining the process we used to accomplish our group service learning project. We were given a checklist that included the criteria we had to meet to finish the project on time. First, we were told to pick a concept for our video. We decided that our concept would be our process of choosing our organization, challenges we met along the way, and how we were able to overcome those challenges.  Next we gathered our equipment, which was an iPhone, and a Mac with iMovie.

      Next, we wrote a script and tasked each member to speak about one aspect of our project. We then filmed and edited the video using iMovie. We split up the work by having two people work on editing the video while the other two worked on the blog post. Finally, we uploaded the video to YouTube and embedded it into this post.    

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbnDOZZAukE&feature=youtu.be
                                                                                           

 Hope you enjoy the video!