Weekly Blog Post 1/29/10

What I Did:

-Worked on book (5 hours)

-Visited Girl Scout Troop #1 to introduce activity (30 minutes)

-Got materials together for workshop with King Elementary 5th grade girls (2 hours)

-Worked on website (2 hours)

-Figured out how to use a Zoom H2 Recorder to record workshop (30 minutes)

What I accomplished/discovered/encountered:

-I worked on a new format for my book. I tried to take different advice from both Chris Pullman and the 3rd Coast Festival directors, Julie Shapiro and Johanna Zorn while thinking about this new design and content. First of all, Chris made me think about creating an introduction for this book, which is what I wrote out. He also got me thinking about giving these people who are reflecting identities (name and age) When meeting with the 3rd Coast Festival directors, they gave me the idea of using these reflections to interact more with the reader and to create characters that the reader would follow throughout the book. I tried to explore this idea- it gets me to connect and interact with the reader more, I believe. I really need to focus on the images that I will include in the book. (The first one was taken from the person who is reflecting, and the second one I took). I want to then show what these women are like today and what they have accomplished, and provide how they overcame their adversity...more to come.

I REALLY enjoyed meeting with Julie Shapiro and Johanna Zorn. They really motivated me and inspired me. I also took a lot of great ideas from them, and I felt that I finally was confident when presenting my project to them.

This week I also visited the first Girl Scout Troop that I will be working with and introduced the project to them. It was so rewarding to see the looks and enthusiasm in these girls faces! They have until February 9th to take the photos and I am not meeting with them again until March 9th to do the workshop. I will be meeting with the 2nd Girl Scout Troop on February 13th. I revamped my handout, which I gave to each girl (the colors look clearer printed out):

The girls were so welcoming and excited, it was great.

Also, my main contact at the Girl Scouts sent my project idea along to a blog writer for annarbor.com, and she is very interested in the project and will be featuring it in an upcoming blog post- this seems interesting...

Tomorrow (Friday) I have my first real workshop with King Elementary School. This will take place during lunch time, and I am trying not to get nervous for it. I have spent some time preparing all my materials and making myself a detailed outline of everything. I am going to see what comes from it, and feel I can't plan what exactly will take place. I am going to record it (thanks to Stephanie's help) (and the teacher said it is fine, as long as I never use names). Perhaps I will be able to use some of the girl's explanations of their photos in my final presentation in the gallery...going to see how this plays out.

I also made little cards that have the website address on them and detailed steps on how to comment.

I am still dealing with the title for this whole thing- the Third Coast Festival directors think that I might be able to pull a title from a conversation that the girls have tomorrow...I am going to see what happens. This could be interesting.

I also now have a component on the website that will allow the girls to continue to send me photos through the website if they want to continue this activity of taking photos of any of the adjectives. This will only allow them to continue the creative process.

web.mac.com/carly9188

I finally feel like everything is starting to fall into place...I am anxious to see how tomorrow goes!

What's next:

-workshop with King

-reviewing the recording

-BOOK and photos for book- I want to create a mock-up of the book (printed) for tuesday

-continue to work on website