Blog blog blog blog...blog

Here I go again--procrastinating on my grading for technology. I created five new blogs yesterday for our Link Crew program. After talking to the other coordinators and hearing how they thought the blog concept would be great but their overwhelming emotion was stress since they have never created their own blog, I decided to make the blog for them. This way, we--the program--get the benefits of the blog with no stress.

For the link crew program, we have divided our over 100 leaders into five coordinators to monitor them and answer any questions. We have a "link crew review" one a month where the link leaders meet with their coordinator and process the activities of the previous month. This is not a mandatory session, but most of the students attend. Because it is not a mandatory meeting, it has been hard keeping track of who was not there and what to do with their "reflection journal" after they hand it in and how to incorporate them within the discussion held at the meeting. Additionally, we wanted a place for them to talk to each other, a central location where they can find resources, let us know when they are having problems, etc--a central headquarters if you will. We have tried having this as a physical space in the building but it is hard to maintain and we were dealing with a lot of different pieces of paper, notes they would leave us (and then we would wonder who took care of the problem) and stuffing mailboxes to alert them of any communications, etc.

The blog seemed to be the answer--a virtual headquarters where one coordinator would be able to talk to a small group of link leaders. In order to cut down on any stress that might come from integrating technology for the other coordinators, I can monitor the blogs and they just need to check it once a month--like the link leaders. I hope that by checking their own blogs, they will start feeling more familiar with the technology and take their blog's ownership on. If not, we still have a great resource for the students. I'll let you know how the process goes.