May 31

1 hour: Coordinating startup posts

1.5 hours: Miscellaneous correspondence with various team members

3.5 hours: Editing and labelling the Alberta International Friendships blog

1 hour: Labelling factsnet.org blog

Hours today: 7

Hours this week: 40

May 30

2 hrs - researching dyscalculia

3 hrs - O Canada

2 hrs - researching how to write grant proposals/starting plan

1 hr - Correcting/moving startup blogs, emailing re: that

1 hr - Miscellaneous correspondence: blog post, editing to-do lists, other email not related to startup posts

Hours today: 9

Total hours this week: 33

May 29

3 hours: Meeting with Melody - outlined Melody's job description post, arranged her access to hsummers and factsum, researched how to write grant proposals
1 hour travel time
2 hours: O Canada network, replacing links
1 hour: Researching dyscalculia
1 hour: Correspondence: blogging,email discussions with team members, etc.

Hours for today: 8
Hours this week: 24

May 28

1.5 hours: Finding  versions of O Canada to replace the ones lost in the garbled post
1 hour: Researching dyscalculia for Adaptabilityl/Disability blog
4 hours: Faith In Action blog - reading, editing and labelling
1 hour: Miscellaneous correspondence relating to coordinating startup posts, arranging meetings, etc.

Today's hours: 7.5
Hours this week: 16

May 27

To Do

Done

4.5 hours: Meeting (including travel time)

1 hour: Startup post: editing, moving, finding/adding links, etc.

1.5 hours: Coordinating startup posts and Summer Jobs 2013 post, including tying up loose ends with hsummers access, etc.

1 hour: Creating or updating To-Do/Done lists, blogging day's activities

0.5 hours: Miscellaneous correspondence: arranging meetings, etc.

Total hours for today: 8.5

Total hours for this week: 8.5

Done

Sustainability Project:

-          Go to Sustainability Tour (booked for Wednesday, May 15 at noon)

-          Find out:

o   What projects relating to composting have already been implemented
Some buildings have small pilot organics projects going. The health reseach building is the first on campus to have a building-wide composting program. That said, most high-traffic areas on campus do not have organics bins.

o   What problems the Office of Sustainability faces regarding HUB mall
There is a multi-level bureaucracy relating to waste management in place everywhere on campus, but it has several more levels at HUB than anywhere else. There is also the problem of pre-consumer waste, which needs the cooperation of the vendors. Other problems include pest management, which is already a problem there.

o   What kind of permissions Melody and I will need in order to do a project
All of the levels of bureaucracy, most of whom will require more resources than we have at this time in order to be convinced to approve our project. 

§  Whether the people we will need to talk to are accessible at this time

§  Which kinds of projects require less stringent approvals

o   What kinds of sustainability projects the Office of Sustainability prioritizes right now
Reduction of energy consumption is going to be big next year.

-          Go to meeting with Janet (business librarian) to see if she has alternate resources to help us with our research
Janet gave us several good resources, the best of which was PMB, a site used by business professionals to gauge public interest in their business proposals.

O Canada network:

-  Check/fix links on renditions 1-100         
-    Replace post 101-150, which seems to have gotten garbled somehow

Disabilities blog:

-          Write a post on dyslexia

-          Write a post on dysgraphia

Indexing project:

-          Label hsummers blog posts

May 25

Admin/Correspondence: 2 hours

Weekly total: 40 hours

May 24

2.5 hours: admin
2.5 hours: correspondence
Today's hours: 5

Total hours for this week: 38

May 23

2 hours. transcribing work

3 hours:labelling posts

1 hour: correspondence

1 hour: Adaptability blog work

1 hour: admin (arranging access to blogs wih new emails, moving posts, etc.)

1 hour: reading Breakthrough Solution

Total today: 9 hours

May 22

6 hours: O Canada Network (fixed links in post, added new content where old links were broken)

1 hour: Correspondence (anymeeting)

1 hour: Admin (tax returns, etc.)

Total hours: 8

Total hours for this week: 24

May 21

O Canada blog: 7 hours

Editing work: 1 hour

Total: 8 hours

May 17

Hours spent at meeting: 2 (plus .5 for travel because I had too many hours otherwise)

Hours spent at university meeting with Melody: 2

Hours for today: 4.5

May 16

Today I spent most of my time cleaning up the O Canada network. The hyperlinked text was split between linking to the song in question and linking to a Canada Symphony Orchestra version of O Canada, which was extremely confusing, so I spent most of the day changing the links. In some cases the links had gone dead, so I had to use a replacement video. This is slow going. I spent (a rather grueling) 7 hours today on a combination of this and a manual cleanup of the formatting on the O Canada network -- the setup of Blogger does not allow for easy reformatting! -- but I have finished two posts so far (most of the way through a third) and I believe they are more useful looking and professional than the original posts.

I also spent about an hour on the phone with Edmonton Public School board to determine whether it is worthwhile to target them for O Canada - here is their policy on O Canada.

Another hour and an half of my day was spent on the disabilities blog, where I researched and added some early intervention strategies for dyslexia and edited my posts for continuity.

The last half hour of my day was spent on correspondence -- blogging, counting up hours, and arranging meetings and such with Melody.

Overall I put in 10 hours today.

May 15

Today I spent a lot of time on the sustainability project -- around two hours in the morning searching the university's website for people who would be useful to meet while we were on campus, then two hours on campus meeting those people. Our (Melody's and my) travel time to and from the university was about an hour all told -- I will contact David after finishing this post to ask about compensation.

Another four hours of my day were spent doing the O Canada network, editing posts for spelling and grammar, re-formatting posts to look more professional, and learning everything I could about the layout of this particular blog.

The last half hour of my day was spent in correspondence (blogging).

My total hours for today were 9.5.

May 14

Today I split about evenly between the O Canada network -- about 3.5 hours -- and the disability blog - about 4 hours. I managed to finish a post on dysgraphia and a post with 100 renditions of O Canada. However, when I went into the factsc account to post it on the network, I found 150 more versions of the song published on the blog. This confused me, since all of my exploration of the blog on the factsnet.org site only yielded the first 50 songs. I think this is a symptom of the difficulties of navigating the site, so I am even more hopeful to get permission to work more in depth on organizing it better. In the meantime, I guess my next project is to look through the 150 other songs and delete any duplicates.

My last half-hour was spent on writing a blog and beginning a "Done" list to complement my "To-Do" list.

May 13

Today was split pretty evenly between the indexing project (4 hours) and the Adaptabilities/Inclusion: Dyslexia post I finished today, plus some extra research to get started with tomorrow (3 hours). The last hour was spent on blogging, mostly making up a detailed to-do list. I did 8 hours total today.

To Do

To Do:

Sustainability Project:

-          Construct and submit a grant proposal based on our research and ideas

-          Assuming we get the grant: implement the project (more details once we have done the proposal)

O Canada network:

-     Check/fix links on posts 151-200
-     Create cohesive formatting for all posts in this network
-     (?) Phase out previews from Amazon and iTunes in favour of complete songs
-     Create posts that group renditions together in categories such as Celebrities, Multicultural, etc.
-     Create a label system for this network

Disabilities blog:

-          Write a post on dyscalculia

-        Write a post on ADD/ADHD
-     Fix formatting on all posts to correspond with Damian's formatting template

Indexing project:

-          Meet with Alison to discuss possible organizations of the site

General:
-    Draft a proposal for schools containing information about the O Canada network and possibly also sustainability things

May 10

Most of my time today I spent on researching learning disabilities for the Disabilities/Adaptability blog -- this information is sitting in a Word document on my computer waiting to be organized into something more coherent for the blog.
I also spent an hour on the O Canada network -- this is also in a Word document, since I am still hoping to get 50 new renditions of the anthem before putting up a second post.
I am looking forward to getting to know Blogger a bit better so as to begin indexing the blogs tomorrow.

Total hours today (including travel time): 8
Total hours this week: 36

May 9

Today was mostly focused on Damian's Disability/Adaptabilities blog. Some of this time - about an hour - was focused on correspondence, reading the contributions of others on the blog to focus my own research. The rest of this time was spent on researching learning disabilities and gathering general resources for parents and teachers of children with disabilities. Some of this information I shared on the Google Drive document the group shares, but the rest of it is currently on my computer pending further information to organize it with.

The rest of my day was mostly focussed on the sustainability project, phoning the University of Alberta's sustainability office and researching their site. The sustainability blog has been updated with my findings.

I am very much looking forward to indexing the blogs and hope that David will have more detailed instructions for me regarding this at tomorrow's meeting.

May 8 Update

I feel today was extremely productive. This morning I spent an hour on preliminary research - finding links, researching ideas - before meeting with Melody at the university for 3 hours to discuss the Sustainability project. Our ideas and decisions regarding the project can be read here, on the joint blog we started to keep track of the project.  I am especially looking forward to the sustainability tour we booked for next Wednesday; it promises to be very interesting. 

Once I was home from the university, I used my remaining time until the meeting to screen and copy some O Canada CDs I found, in order to add to the O Canada network. It has only now occurred to me that there may be copyright issues with this; pending a response from David on this issue, I will try to find iTunes or Amazon previews of the CDs, as well as going to the library to find more of them.

The meeting was also very productive - I loved Damian's blog proposal and am very excited to work on it. Those of us who are working on this blog have exchanged emails and plan to do a group chat tomorrow to further discuss the blog and hopefully make some progress on a template for blog content. I have a few concerns regarding the blog's accessibility once it makes it onto the site: so far in browsing I have not found it intuitive to find the resources I am looking for, and worry that others may have the same issue. Since I am not a tech person, I believe I am a fairly good barometer for the average Internet user; I believe the accessibility and organization of resources on the site is something that should be looked into. 

Career and Personal Development Session 1: Personal and Relational Development

This post will detail my goals for personal and relational growth this summer.

Personal: My weakness has always been my memory; I forget everything. In order to minimize the damage this causes to my personal, academic and work lives, I need to improve my organizational skills. The most important way I hope to do this is by keeping a notebook on hand at all times, ideally with several sections for each part of my life, and write all of my engagements, projects and tasks in it.

Relational: I am a conflict avoider in my private and public lives, which is usually a good thing and has taught me a lot of useful skills. However, sometimes conflict is needed to solve a problem satisfactorily. My relational goal this summer is to work on confronting the things that need to be confronted and having these conflicts in a constructive way.

Career and Personal Development Session 1: Career Goals

This post will detail my short, medium and long-term career goals for my life.

Short term: I hope to gain valuable experience with FACTSnet this summer doing useful, practical things to benefit the organization and further its goals. To help me achieve this goal, I would appreciate a clear, practical written outline of the goals of both the organization and the associated site. If needed, I can help with this. Also in the short (ish) term, I would like to use my experience to get hired at the library at Augustana campus in the fall. 

Medium term: I would like to continue working as much as possible during my undergraduate career so as to leave university with few to no student loans. My ideal would be to work on-campus at Augustana during the school year, then switch to FACTSnet or an organization that offers similar experiences during the summer. Once I have my undergraduate degree, I want to become a library assistant to support my graduate studies in Library and Information Sciences.

Long term: Once I have my Master's degree, I want to be a librarian. Currently I am looking at a career with Edmonton Public Library, possibly as an Outreach Librarian or something similar, but I will look at other opportunities as they present themselves. Whatever the job I take is, I will be prioritizing steadiness and job security over pay. 

Summer Program Coordinator -- May 7

I spent about an hour today in administrative duties, including labelling and sorting emails and sending emails containing employment information out to new hires.

A lot of my day today was spent working on the O Canada network -- I have taken it from 49 songs to 70, trying to make each addition unique in some way and eliminating or changing some original links that have since gone dead. I hope to eventually get the number up to an even 100, but after some exhaustive Internet searches, I believe the blog's original goal of 200 renditions is unrealistic. I introduced to the blog the use of languages other than the two official languages of Canada -- including Arabic, Chinese and Mikmaq -- so as to underline the diversity of our country. Another feature I tried to incorporate was the use of different musical instruments and styles to play the piece, to support the blog's goal of being a resource to music teachers in elementary schools.

The rest of my time today was spent in looking through the factsNET index, to see what categories could be used to sort the blogs on the index. One thing I noticed was that the Canadian blog is inaccessible to the public, but using the factsc account, I could see it. When I did, I noted that it is one of the nicest-looking and most informative blogs factsNET has. Is there a reason it is inaccessible to the public?

Summer Coordinator for Community Networks (Post-Secondary)

My job involves a little bit of everything, so my goals for this summer are extremely varied. One thing I am hoping to do is help with the translation and creation of networks for Francophone Canadians; I am very excited about the opportunity to use my bilingualism for something useful, rather than just in a school environment. On a wider scale, I have always been interested in immigrants to Canada and hope to help new Canadians find jobs and resources in their new homes.

I also hope to work on sustainability initiatives with the three University of Alberta campuses, two of whom I will have contacts with by next year. Some ideas for this I have come up with include campus-wide composting programs and laundry facilities that offer the option of air-drying clothing instead of using energy-intensive dryers for every article of clothing. Although I have begun research on this, it has mostly involved researching the benefits of making these changes, in order to pitch the idea to the University of Alberta Sustainability Grant program.

Some additional ideas I have had to enrich the FACTS networks included networks for religions other than Christianity, which would foster a greater sense of community with Canadians of different religions in addition to giving FACTSnet access to resources that may be unique to these religious communities.