This week LingoOnline was required to give a panel a presentation about our group. We gave them a rundown on who were are, what we have done, the website, and what we want to do in the future. It seemed to go really well and I think the panel liked our group and where we were heading. Here are the questions they sent us and our answers (Some are incomplete):
I. Project Narrative: In a few sentences, please describe your group’s current work. This is not restating your mission, but rather describing projects in which you are currently engaged.
Hello, my name is Natalie Ogg and I am part of the Lingo Online Service Learning group. Currently, we are teaching college level students in South Korea English through Skype. We formulate, execute, and then analyze our own lesson plans so we can improve our teaching, planning, and speaking skills. We’re always looking to expand and have tried connecting with other schools around the world.
II. Milestones for this period:
a) What has your group accomplished to date in accordance with your mission/goals?
Our goals, in short, included teaching students (from more than one school/country), creating videos/website, and teaching locally. This year we have only taught Korean students. We did teach Peruvian students last year, but the project ended up falling through. This has not worried us at all. Teaching Korean students has helped us learn to teach and is going to give us future credibility.
We do have a website and we plan to start filming videos and posting them.
Teaching locally is still one of our goals, but we have not been able to pursue it due to limited connections and time.
b) How are you accounting for your:
a. Project progress (i.e. documenting online, photos, videos, etc.)
We now have an "Updates" section on our website. We are going to use this to keep everyone up to date on the everyday "life" of LingoOnline. For our own personal use, we have a google doc (http://tinyurl.com/lingoonline) that shows student attendance, times available, Korean-USA time table, and other reminders.
b. Financial management (i.e. tracking of fundraising and allocation of group funds)
We do have some fund from last year's fundraising. At the moment, we do not have any specific use for our funds, but we plan to hold on to them for the future (Like buying computers).
c) What is your system for managing your group’s projects?
a. Do you set periodic goals and plans?
Yes. We set daily goals when we meet for the Service Learning period. Every member comes into the room so we can see who will be in the period that day. We then have a meeting among the leaders to discuss our goals for the period. Our original goal once members began their lessons was to assign a Korean student for every member of Lingo Online. We have yet to discuss larger goals regarding expanding our scope to places other than to the Korean women’s college we are currently working with.
b. Do you have assigned roles within the group?
Yes, however the roles are limited and the member embodying each role does not have a specific job. We have Mr. Strong as the advisor, Maggy and Chandler as the Senior advisors, Maddie as a Junior advisor, and Natalie and myself as co-leaders. The expectations for the roles in our group were not discussed in detail, however we had a short discussion last week about solidifying what each role should be accountable for. I assume we will continue that discussion in more detail in the coming weeks.
c. Do you have a system yet?
If a system means the organization of our group, then yes. We have leaders who help to direct the daily tasks. A plan for the work we need to complete during the allotted Service Learning time each week is decided on at the beginning of the period and written on the whiteboard so everyone knows what we will be doing. We also have a Google Spreadsheet that is possibly one of the most useful things we have created thus far. It contains the times that each member is available to teach, the attendance sheet that each student is responsible for filling out each week in accordance with the days they teach their student, and many other useful “tabs”. We are still working on developing precise responsibilities for each leader and member of our group. Considering our group is so large, we may not even need every member to have a specific job.
d) How are you sharing or planning to share your group’s work with our school or other audiences?
a. Community life presentation (or similar)
b. Websites (Google site, Ning page, other…)
c. Presentations to other schools, organizations, etc.
d. Invited speakers (i.e. bringing in an expert to speak with your group or the PRS community)
We share our group's work with our website. People, from anywhere, can use it to see what we do every week and what we have accomplished. For a more direct approach, we do have powerpoint that we can use for community life, or similar, presentations.
III. Follow-up/Next step(s): List any near-term steps that your group plans to take as you move forward to accomplish your goals. Please be thorough and specific.
GOALS FOR OUR GROUP-->
1. Begin filming lessons that will be uploaded to our website
- materials needed for these videos:
A. Real video camera
B. Props
- lessons will be based off of previously made lessons made for our students
2. Create more connections
- So far we have started to build a connection in Taiwan with the help of Ms. Chu
- We hope to begin skyping the students (possibly 4th graders) in the next upcoming months
- Mr. Ricther proposed starting a connection in Portugal
IV. Questions that need answers: These can be specific questions that you have for the Panel (i.e. How might you suggest we go about doing this?)
V. Anything else you would like to document and/or share with the review panel about your group?
This panel allowed us to think about the group's past and where we want to go in the future. Mr. Le also told us of another teaching opportunity with a group in Afghanistan. We will see if we can go further with that connection.
That was this weeks events. Many more weeks to come.
Chandler Hoffmann
I. Project Narrative: In a few sentences, please describe your group’s current work. This is not restating your mission, but rather describing projects in which you are currently engaged.
Hello, my name is Natalie Ogg and I am part of the Lingo Online Service Learning group. Currently, we are teaching college level students in South Korea English through Skype. We formulate, execute, and then analyze our own lesson plans so we can improve our teaching, planning, and speaking skills. We’re always looking to expand and have tried connecting with other schools around the world.
II. Milestones for this period:
a) What has your group accomplished to date in accordance with your mission/goals?
Our goals, in short, included teaching students (from more than one school/country), creating videos/website, and teaching locally. This year we have only taught Korean students. We did teach Peruvian students last year, but the project ended up falling through. This has not worried us at all. Teaching Korean students has helped us learn to teach and is going to give us future credibility.
We do have a website and we plan to start filming videos and posting them.
Teaching locally is still one of our goals, but we have not been able to pursue it due to limited connections and time.
b) How are you accounting for your:
a. Project progress (i.e. documenting online, photos, videos, etc.)
We now have an "Updates" section on our website. We are going to use this to keep everyone up to date on the everyday "life" of LingoOnline. For our own personal use, we have a google doc (http://tinyurl.com/lingoonline) that shows student attendance, times available, Korean-USA time table, and other reminders.
b. Financial management (i.e. tracking of fundraising and allocation of group funds)
We do have some fund from last year's fundraising. At the moment, we do not have any specific use for our funds, but we plan to hold on to them for the future (Like buying computers).
c) What is your system for managing your group’s projects?
a. Do you set periodic goals and plans?
Yes. We set daily goals when we meet for the Service Learning period. Every member comes into the room so we can see who will be in the period that day. We then have a meeting among the leaders to discuss our goals for the period. Our original goal once members began their lessons was to assign a Korean student for every member of Lingo Online. We have yet to discuss larger goals regarding expanding our scope to places other than to the Korean women’s college we are currently working with.
b. Do you have assigned roles within the group?
Yes, however the roles are limited and the member embodying each role does not have a specific job. We have Mr. Strong as the advisor, Maggy and Chandler as the Senior advisors, Maddie as a Junior advisor, and Natalie and myself as co-leaders. The expectations for the roles in our group were not discussed in detail, however we had a short discussion last week about solidifying what each role should be accountable for. I assume we will continue that discussion in more detail in the coming weeks.
c. Do you have a system yet?
If a system means the organization of our group, then yes. We have leaders who help to direct the daily tasks. A plan for the work we need to complete during the allotted Service Learning time each week is decided on at the beginning of the period and written on the whiteboard so everyone knows what we will be doing. We also have a Google Spreadsheet that is possibly one of the most useful things we have created thus far. It contains the times that each member is available to teach, the attendance sheet that each student is responsible for filling out each week in accordance with the days they teach their student, and many other useful “tabs”. We are still working on developing precise responsibilities for each leader and member of our group. Considering our group is so large, we may not even need every member to have a specific job.
d) How are you sharing or planning to share your group’s work with our school or other audiences?
a. Community life presentation (or similar)
b. Websites (Google site, Ning page, other…)
c. Presentations to other schools, organizations, etc.
d. Invited speakers (i.e. bringing in an expert to speak with your group or the PRS community)
We share our group's work with our website. People, from anywhere, can use it to see what we do every week and what we have accomplished. For a more direct approach, we do have powerpoint that we can use for community life, or similar, presentations.
III. Follow-up/Next step(s): List any near-term steps that your group plans to take as you move forward to accomplish your goals. Please be thorough and specific.
GOALS FOR OUR GROUP-->
1. Begin filming lessons that will be uploaded to our website
- materials needed for these videos:
A. Real video camera
B. Props
- lessons will be based off of previously made lessons made for our students
2. Create more connections
- So far we have started to build a connection in Taiwan with the help of Ms. Chu
- We hope to begin skyping the students (possibly 4th graders) in the next upcoming months
- Mr. Ricther proposed starting a connection in Portugal
IV. Questions that need answers: These can be specific questions that you have for the Panel (i.e. How might you suggest we go about doing this?)
V. Anything else you would like to document and/or share with the review panel about your group?
This panel allowed us to think about the group's past and where we want to go in the future. Mr. Le also told us of another teaching opportunity with a group in Afghanistan. We will see if we can go further with that connection.
That was this weeks events. Many more weeks to come.
Chandler Hoffmann
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