Done!

We're done with our project on the National High School Journalism Competition! I am very excited to be done because I feel like I have accomplished a lot during this project and have helped RJI immensely when they plan the actual competition this summer. I am very proud of all of my research and leadership skills this past semester. I am proud of how I handled them and how the successful the final product ultimately was.

We had our final presentation today and I think it went really well and the professors were really impressed with all of our research. They were especially excited with the trial run, which really was my thing throughout the semester that I really took ownership of. I am so proud of the whole project and am glad it came to a close so successfully.

I cannot believe that it was just two years ago that I took my first convergence fundamentals class. I am now leaving the journalism school to pursue a reporting career in New York City. I am so excited! It's been a great couple of years and I am excited to start my career.

Finishing Up

This past week I started working on the final paper/presentation and I still haven't gotten the final products from Medina's class yet, but I expect to get them sometime today. Hopefully.

I wrote the final survey, which Medina's class took because as I understand it they have finished this project. Medina had what we thought was a genius idea to have each group create a Google website to post their stories on. That part of the project, which was not our idea at all, seems to have backfired because it was very challenging for the students to do and caused a lot of problems. So, Medina called me on Tuesday and asked if he could get me the projects by Wednesday, which I said was okay. However, I still haven't received the final projects, but hopefully I'll get them by this afternoon. I'm not too worried about it.

I've written most of my section of the project, which is the trial run, since that has been what I have contributed my heart and soul to during this competition. I have worked very hard this whole semester on all the components on this project, but the trial run was definitely the part of the semester I am most proud of. It was my idea and I put it all together.

I'm looking forward to presenting our research to the faculty next week and seeing what they think of our findings. I can't believe that I'm graduating in a week's time and that my student career is over. At least for now. I am off to bigger and better things, I suppose.

Here is a link to my website: hayleykaplan.weebly.com. Thanks for reading. And thanks for a great journalism education.

Trial Run, Week 3

Our trial run is nearly over! It would have been over today, but Medina's class was so stressed by the deadline that I told him his students could have until this Tuesday to finish up their projects. Medina was very hesitant to extend the deadline, but I think some groups really needed it. I think he's really trying to enforce deadline responsibility onto his students, which is good.

I actually heard from my groups a little bit more this past week, which was good. The one thing about this trial run has been that the college mentoring has not worked as well as I'd hoped, but I did hear from my groups this week and was able to advise them, so I hope that helped them.

I'm working on putting together the final survey this weekend, so the students can take the exit survey early next week. I'm also going to arrange an exit interview with Medina to clear up a couple of questions I have for the final paper/presentation, which we have already started preparing for.

So, I think everything is coming together nicely. We're just tying up a few loose ends at this point and hopefully the trial run will be complete by early next week.

Trial Run, Week 2

Our trial run is in its second week and its going pretty well I think despite some roadblocks. We've really been focused on this trial run in these last few weeks of the semester. The Hickman High School trial run didn't work out just because we ran out of time and didn't think we would have enough resources to supply to their students, so this is the last big thing we're doing for our research.

I've been communicating a lot with Mr. Medina, the high school teacher in New York and he's been the one who's been really excited about this trial run. We got the second round of weekly reports from the groups who according to Medina are working very hard to meet their tight deadline next Friday, when the trial run officially ends. Some of the students have also took the mid-term survey.

The main problem we're having with the trial run is that despite all the e-mails we've sent out to our individual groups none of them have responded to us. In the survey, the students said that they didn't hear from their college mentors (i.e. us), which is so weird since we've all e-mailed them at least once. So the college mentoring isn't going as well as we'd hoped, but everything else seems to be going fine. It'll be interesting to see the actual stories that are produced next week. They had three weeks to produce two multimedia elements, so we'll see what they come up with. I'm looking forward to it!

Trial Run!

Our trial run has finally begun! We are so excited about it and I am so happy it has finally started! Mr. Medina's class in Endicott, New York has been divided into six groups and each of us has taken on two groups and are communicating with them regularly.

I started the week by having a long conversation with Mr. Medina and making sure we were all on the same page about the three week trial run and we were all on the same page. He had his class take our introductory survey, e-mailed me the names and e-mail addresses of his group members who have already picked stories to report on for the three-week period of time, and we have each taken on two groups and have started communicating with them.

I'm excited that we seem to be off to a good start here. Mr. Medina seems excited about the trial run, despite all the things we have to have him do for us and we're excited to have him participate. Hopefully his students are just as excited but we'll see as we continue to communicate with them.

The trial run/extended focus group with Hickman High School is coming along a little bit slower because we've been so focused on this trial run, but I have no doubt that the Hickman trial run will happen eventually too. We're very excited that we're making progress on this trial run and look forward to the results that it will eventually yield.

Prepping for Trial Runs

This week was all about preparing for our trial runs. Our trial run with Ed Medina's class in New York begins on Monday, so I worked on finalizing everything with him and making sure he and I were on the same page with everything and his students were all ready to start working on their stories on Monday. We are very excited that this is going to be starting on Monday and lasting three weeks. We put the final details on everything this past week and I feel like we are ready to go on Monday. We will monitor the class, which will be divided into groups, thoroughly and receive weekly updates from them and Mr. Medina and survey them weekly, so we have many ways to monitor their progress. We are very excited to get this trial run started!

We also worked this week on getting the trial run/extended focus group started with Kim Pettlon's class at Hickman. We want to make the trial run with her class more technology based and see how into the technology her class is and how much they take away from it. We had a very in depth discussion on what we want to do with her class and a lot of it will just depend on what technology her class has available, which we are unsure of. So we have a few more things to find out from her, but after that we want to get the trial run with her class going soon.

I think we're in a really good place right now. These two trial runs are the final stages of our research and I have every reason to believe they will go very smoothly, although Kim Pettlon's class will take a lot of work to plan since Mr. Medina's class trial run has been planned out for a while now.

Trial Run

This week, we really focused on getting our trial run plan up and running for Mr. Medina in New York to review. We also had to get our presentation for Monday done, so we did that first and then concentrated on forming the specifics of our trial run. We kind of knew what they would be from the beginning because we wanted the trial run to be a miniature version of the actual competition, we just needed to put it on paper. So, I spent most of Monday doing just that and formulating a plan of how we were going to actually monitor the progress of the trial run for our research. I think we have a pretty good plan.

Kate focused on working on the first survey, which Mr. Medina will give to the students before the competition begins. We are going to survey the students before, during and after the trial run and also have them do informal weekly check-ins as the trial run progresses. So those are our two main ways of monitoring the progress of the trial run. We haven't heard back from Mr. Median about what we thinks of the trial run, but we've been keeping in close contact with him so far about the trial run, so communication with him has definitely not been a problem.

Because of the way his school's Spring Break works out the trial run will begin April 12 and last three weeks, so it's perfect timing for us because it'll end right a week before finals week. That will be enough time to review all of our research from the trial run and their final products they'll be turning into us. I'm very excited about this! I've spent a lot of time putting this whole thing together and I'm excited to see it materialize. We'll also be working on getting a different type of trial run going with Kim Pettlon's class at Hickman High School going after Spring Break is over. Until then, have a good break everyone!