This weeks journal entry is a chance for students to reflect on how the Action Project is going so far. In general, how do you think our action project is going so far? Specifically, what is going well in terms of positive actions, behaviors, successes. etc. that you have observed? Also what is not going well? What changes in your actions or in your behaviors can you make to help improve your experience and to be more efficient in organizing our project in the next few weeks? Please feel free to comment on todays trip to the Growing Gardens, specifically what you learned from our guest speaker. A comment or two on what you feel are the limitations and realistic goals for this project would also help the project managers organize the rest of our project.
lucky davis
For me it is mixed. There are a lot of good ideas out there and what we have planned looks good, it is just a matter of making it happen. We still have a lot of obstacles to jump. I can see it working if we just put the time and energy into it.
It was great to go see a working greenhouse. We got so many questions answered there it really helped. As I said we still have a lot of work to do, but the project is in our hands and we can make it work if we want to.
Lucky
sara c
I can imagine our project going either way- being a huge success and really fun to build or I could see something really bad happening to prevent us from building it. Since I’m just on the media/education team, I don’t know too much about the logistics of it- what we need, what we’ve done, and what we could realistically do or build. I don’t think we will end up planting very much (if at all) this quarter, the bulk of what we are going to do seems to be actually BUILDING the greenhouse.
So far, I honestly don’t feel like we’ve done much. Everything seems to have been planning and leading up to building the greenhouse.
Alix
I think the greenhouse is turning out pretty well so far, but because a lot of the materials we needed were taken, its going to take longer to get the remaining materials we need. Hopefully resource 200 will be willing to donate the materials, and as soon as possible because that will make things easier. Most of the people in each group seem eager and willing to contribute to the project. I could step it up a little and take more responsibility for my group.
I thought we learned a lot from the woman at Growing Gardens, for both regular gardens and the green house. Obviously our greenhouse is not going to be as nice and well prepared as their’s is, but I think if we have enough determination, we can build a pretty nice greenhouse! Some things to worry about are vandalism, especially from college students who may find it funny to rip a hole in our plastic covering; also about how we are going to keep the building warm at night and cool in the day! I defenitly think we need to make our own natural pesticides. Planting hardier plants for the winter is more realistic.
ginny_w
The Greenhouse…
I believe the greenhouse is an excellent idea for our action project.
I was worried for a few days, I felt like people were not doing what they were suppose to, some doing more work than others, and organizations not being reliable. But, after we paid a visit to the growing gardens, my whole outlook changed.
Seeing a greenhouse in action gave me hope for ours. Being able to have questions answered by a legitmate source and seeing the garden brought me excitement!
I think we have a good crew of students, each with awesome indivsduality and each with unique skills, and with all of us colaborating together- we can really make this greenhouse happen.
Growing Gardens was such a good experience. The guest speaker was really informative and knew exactly what to do with our greenhouse.
She gave our class interesting information and I really absorbed everything she said and will take it into great consideration.
I am quite worried about starting the greenhouse on Sep. 25th.
I feel like as a class, we are not as prepared as we should be.
I don’t feel like it is nescecarily our fault,
but certian situations.
But, I think we will do a great job!
Sunshine and all.
RubyKF
Overall, I feel like the project is going quite well despite our main obstacle of not having any materials. Things seem to be falling into place pretty smoothly since Rescource said they would donate and we got monetary donations from several businesses.
It was perfect to get advice and information from Julie at Growing Gardens. She had exactly the info we needed to acually run the greenhouse and she also had some great rescources that we can contact. I liked her ideas for space management: raised and hanging beds. It seems like a good idea to grow some easy crops first just to see how they fair in the cold and what environment our greenhouse can provide. It would definately be worth it to find out how much weight the ceiling could hold and if we could somehow operate a space heater of some sort in the greenhouse during the colder months.
The biggest obstacles I think we face now are coming up with a management plan and building the thing in time. I feel like Ginny in particular has gone above and beyond to make sure things get done. I could use her as an example in my role as project manager in terms of being active. Thanks Ginny!
The only thing I feel is not going well is that there is not even distribution of work. This does depend on the role each person has chosen but I feel that things could be spread around a bit especially now that we are in crunch time and need to focus on getting this done. For instance, the filming crew really doesn’t have anything to do right now and should focus on taking care of things that other groups might be short people for, or just taking the initiative to do whatever extra things need to be done.
A realistic goal for the greenhouse this year is to come up with a management system, experiment with plants to grow and how much we can grow, and finally setting up a system for our crops (who are we giving them to and how).
tess
The action project seems to be going well. I think it started off kind of slow, and we weren’t really that motivated as a class, but after going to the Growing Gardens I think everyone has gotten more excited about the project. We learned a lot from the woman who spoke with us and now that we have more information about building the greenhouse efficiently and what to grow in it, we can really get things started. We have talked to a fair amount of businesses who are willing to donate materials or money to us, and it is great to recieve that support. Everyone has been on top of making phone calls, and writing emails to contact these people. I think the three groups are working well, and we are successful for the most part. I know I can be more organized, and go help other groups when I don’t have anything to do. Other than that things seem to be going well.
Bolivia67
I think that our project is definitely do-able. The previous class has done most of the pre-work and research, now we just have to build it. A lot of things that would tie us down if we didn’t have the other class, such as research into different greenhouses. Luckily, we have a blueprint that is extremely specific. We also have a materials list that would take us awhile to come up with. They already got BVSD approval which no doubt took awhile in the sea of bureaucracy.
With those things out of the way we can concentrate on actually contacting different agencies such as ReSource and various different media agencies. If we can get the materials, which shouldn’t take us too long, then we just need the actual action.
Honestly, I am a little worried about the action component. It won’t be hard to get the materials, but finding a person with carpentry experience should be difficult. This step is crucial. I know that I do not know how to build a greenhouse, and I am quite confident that anybody else in the class knows either.
As far as things that aren’t going well, I think that because most of the background research has been done, it is difficult to assign new projects for people. I think that Ruby and Alexi are doing very well as project managers, I just think there isn’t enough work to go around right now. Once we have the materials I think people can pull their weight (or not) by working.
-Brian
Daniel
I think our action project is moving along pretty smoothly so far. This is a hard task to accomplish so considering that, I think it’s its pretty good. Documenting a movie on it might be a bit difficult because it’s such a big project and that It can only be about five minutes long, I’m going to have to do a lot of editing. The picture slideshow should be easy. We have a lot of photos so all we need to do is collaborate them all and make the slideshow. I am a bit concerned though because there still is a lot left to accomplish and we still have to build the whole thing and make a movie and get tools and make signs…there just seems like a lot for only about three more weeks of this class. I’m sure we’ll get it done though.