We’re nearing the home stretch! And I couldn’t be happier. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this project, but I’ve been working from home, still helping my son with distance learning, helping my husband with some of his school work – all while trying not to fail this class. So it’s blessing to have made it this far. I haven’t met with Mary (my project partner) in a few weeks and I’m assuming that everything is going well. I think we are both extremely busy so trying to lock down some time, especially a reoccurring meeting, has proven to be difficult to do. With that being said, I’m hoping that our group project is cohesive and flows together despite the fact that we haven’t checked in very much.

As far as this week goes, I have a lot of things planned. Along with this blog, I plan to post at least 3 times throughout the week in out group blog – with one post including a video I will be creating with my son. I’m trying to decide if I want to include the other video I’ll be making on our group blog or if I just want to share it on our social media pages. I’m thinking of doing both, because it’s nice when you have multiple areas where you access one piece of information. I will be honest and say that my videos will probably not be the greatest, because I’m not very tech savvy when it comes to creating videos or editing videos – so bare with me.

I think I did a great job with my social media presence last week. I’ve to think outside of the box as far as adding additional information, outside videos/documentaries that support our topic, articles that go with our topic, as well as victories for survivors of child abuse/maltreatment. I personally think I’ve been doing better with the social media aspect of our project than our group blog, because I find it easier to share information and give it a caption than trying to create brand new content from scratch. For our group blog, I might create a post that gives some resources per state for child abuse prevention and/or intervention. I’m not sure if that’s blog worthy, but I think it would be important information to have all in one place – in case somebody needs it.

We’re so close to end of the semester and this project is a great way to wrap up the semester. The last few weeks have been a bit hectic for me, but I’m glad that I’m able to get large pieces of our group project done and that I have a plan going into this final week of the project before creating the project portfolio. I’m pumped and ready to get working on this final week.

I can’t believe that we only have 3 more weeks left of our project. I feel like I’m FINALLY getting into the swing of things and it’s about to be over. So far, it’s been a great and challenging experience. As I shared last week, I’ve finally been able to access our group blog so I’ve been doing my best to catch up on getting caught up with my portion of blog postings, but once I get more ideas of blog posts, I’ll be able to get 3-4 posts done in a week – I’m a pretty quick writer. As of right now, creating blog posts is my top priority and I’ll be catching up during Thanksgiving break.

I also have to create 2 videos before I start creating my portfolio and I only have one idea, but I don’t know how I want to record or how long the video should be. Once I narrow all that down, I plan on doing both videos either in the same day or in the same week so they’re done and I don’t have to worry about them anymore. I’ve been tweeting and posting on Instagram at least twice a week, if possible. If I miss a week, I make sure I make up for that throughout the following week.

The only thing I found disheartening is that my partner and I haven’t really talked too much throughout the process, so she has all these clean blog posts and media graphics, while I’m just doing everything generically. I would’ve liked us to come up with a theme or format for our blog postings and media graphics so that everything flowed together, and we would BOTH use those formats when posting. Right now, it looks like a bunch of different random people are posting from our social media and blog sites. There should be some sort of cohesion or consistency throughout our social media sites and our blog as well. Other than that, I think the group project has going pretty smoothly.

UNTIL NEXT WEEK’S CHECK-IN….

This past week has been extremely busy for me, but I was able to get a few posts out on our group blog. I had been having some difficulty accessing the blog as an author, but Mary worked her magic and made everything work out just fine. I’m 2 weeks behind on posting in our group blog so I have to post at least three times – one of which I already did for this week – but I’ll add the other two by the weekend so I can get caught up.

I’ll be honest – I’m having a little difficulty figuring out what to post on our group blog, because I’m not sure if I want to share a whole bunch of personal stories and I haven’t really asked anyone else if they have any stories they’d like to share. I feel like you can only share so much information and statistical data on the issue before you become redundant or start to sound boring. My hope is that I can run through some ideas with Mary sometime this week.

One frustrating piece of working in a group is trying to get a meeting scheduled each week so you can check in, ask questions, make sure everyone is still on the same page, and come up with a game plan so everyone does their share of the project. I’m really hoping that we can chat sometime this week and catch up, because we still have videos that we have to make and submit in the next 2 weeks and I’m not the best at creating content like that, so I was looking forward to picking Mary’s brain and seeing if she could give me some much needed guidance.

My focus for this week is to do at least two posts on Instagram and two posts on Twitter, in addition to adding two new posts to our group blog. I think if you post twice a week on your social media pages, you’ll meet the requirements. I’m also keeping screen shots of each post that I make, including the blog postings, so I can use them throughout my project portfolio. I’m really looking forward to completing this project, because it’s been really difficult for me.

So we were able to create our group blog, but I’ve had some difficulty getting access to it so I can post content. Mary has been working tirelessly to get that corrected and once that issue gets fixed, I’ll go in a post at least 2 posts to get caught up. Our group blog was set up by Mary and she has done the first post – which is AMAZING. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the blog flourishes and grows as we progress in our project.

For a social media presence, our group decided to focus on Twitter and Instagram. So far we have some great posts, with great information. As of today, I’ve posted twice on our Twitter account and once on our Instagram account. During our last meeting, Mary suggested that I take a screenshot of all of my postings so I can have them ready for the portfolio that’s due at the end of the semester and I thought was a FANTASTIC idea – so that’s what I’ll be doing from now on.

When choosing content to post, I’m trying to find creative pictures, articles, and other informative things to add to our social media pages. I’m pretty tech savvy, so I’m not too worried about how to post them, I’m just trying to find the best ones that will really help drive our point home. I’m also working on video ideas so I can have them recorded and posted by the end of the month. I’ll probably release them on YouTube, with a private link so I can share that link and anyone who clicks on it will have access to the video. I’m planning on doing one video with my son and we’re going to discuss child abuse from a child’s perspective.

Now – my son lives in a VERY safe home and we’ve done our absolute best to keep him safe, so I don’t think he’ll have stories to tell from personal experiences or not, but my hope is that we can discuss how he feels about child abuse even existing and his thoughts on how we can prevent it from happening.

Hopefully our group will be able to meet this week and I’m thinking of suggesting that we add some sort of “Resources” page on our blog so that people can have the National Child Abuse Hotline information, but then we could possibly give resources or contact information for different states so everyone could have easy access to that information.

Overall, I think we’re doing great! And as I said earlier, I can’t wait to see how things progress. I believe we’re doing great work to bring awareness to this social justice issue and we’ll have a solid project to present when we’re finished.

 

For our group collaborative project, my partner and I are focusing on child abuse and maltreatment. We chose this topic because we’ve both had experience with this issue. We know that we won’t be able to completely eradicate child abuse on a large scale given the amount of time that we’ve been given, but we really want to bring awareness to the issue. My partner Mary and I met on Monday (11/2/2020) to discuss our topic and create a plan so we could begin moving forward. After some discussion, it was decided that Mary would be the “leader” since she has done a project/portfolio for Dr. Kilborn in a few previous classes so she has more experience that I do. Since Mary agreed to be the group leader, she set up our group blog and we’ll being posting in it on a weekly basis. My hope is that we can meet sometime next week and schedule weekly meetings going forward so we can get some type of momentum going. We’re both very strong communicators so we’ve have our Zoom meeting, talked through, email and through the group discussion section on D2L.

Thankfully, Mary and I are both tech savvy so we’ve already set up our Twitter and Instagram pages for our social media campaign. Mary has already posted the first Instagram post, so that’s a good start. We both have access to both platforms so we can get more postings done that way. We’ve agreed that we both will do 2 videos a piece and I might suggest that we make one additional video together – just to be on the safe side. We’re still in the brainstorming stage, but I think with our work ethics and innovative spirits, we’ll be able to create a compelling and informative social campaign for this collaborative project.