Journal Club (C+S)
| Time per session | Approx. 1 hour per task and meeting |
| How often | Monthly meetings and trimestral newsletter |
| Activity Duration | 1 Year (11/09/2016 Start) |
| Reflections |
Once every 3 months |
Activity Short Description:
I will have an active role in our school's Journal Club. The Journal Club prepares the trimestral newsletters and manages the Student News in the school website. My role will be to write articles and to help with the IT of the club.
Personal Goal for the Activity:
What I hope to accomplish by being part of the Journal Club is to keep students and parents informed about the big occurrances in the school by writing newsletters. Trimestral newsletters are usually read by most parents and students, and writing meaningful quality articles can more effectively inform them. I will know that I have achieved my objective if I successfully publish articles once every trimester.
Anticipated Learning Outcomes:
5. Demonstrte the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively:
For being in the Journal Club, I will have to show my writing and technological skills and I will have to work with other Journal Club members to finally publish the newsletters.
Reflections
Term 1
Throughout this first term as an official member of the Journal Club, I have been assigned two main tasks: the first one was to send a creative piece of work of my own and the other was to show my class' first impression of the IB.
I sincerely have to thank the Journal Club leaders for running this club is such an organized and effective manner. Even though I sometimes did not feel like writing, the constantly motivated me and made me be proud of the Journal Club.
In my opinion, I have done a good job this trimester. I have submitted all of my works on time and have been congratulated by the quality of my writing.
At the end of this term, the members were told that the leaders would not be able to run for much long due to their final IB exams. This will probably happen for the last rimester only. The members have been asked whether we would like to be the next leaders of the Journal Club. I would like to, but I believe I am already into many club in the school for me to run another one; and additionally, it would be nice to have some time to study. I still do not know though, I will think about it.
Term 2
Throughout this second term in the Journal Club, I have only been assigned one written task. This task was basically to inform the parents and students about a visit from the educational group Lanterna Education.
On January 27th, 2017, our school hosted a visit from the organization Lanterna Education. Lanterna is an IB-oriented organization that helps students be prepared for the IB and for the exams. I found this visit very interesting, since it provided with plenty of tips to succeed in the Diploma Programme.
My job as a Journal Club member was to turn into writing everything experienced by 10th, 11th, 12th graders throughout the visit. I have to say that it was a pleasure to write this article mainly because of the great comments provided by my classmates.
I think that I have improved the quality of my writing from the first trimester to this one, making the information more clear and the writing more understandable.
Once again, I have to thank the organizers of my school's Journal Club. This will be the last term they will be running it, and they have demonstrated to experience and professionality. I do not yet know who will be running the Journal Club in the following term, but I am sure that it will run as smoothly with the great talent in 11th and 10th grade students.
Term 3
For this term in the Journal Club, I was not assigned to write any article for the Newsletter. This is because this edition of the Newsletter would contain half of the stories we usually have each trimester. The other half of the newsletter would contain creative works of literature written by students in our school. One of the would be a literary piece written by myself.
I wanted to send one of my best literary works, and therefore read all the written taks and assignments I had done all over the year in the English A class. After reading them all, I decided to send a written task 1 about the news bias from the part of Fox News during the US election campaign. I find this work very interesting and I hope that the readers of the Newsletter will see it the same way.
Term 4
Since the leaders of the Journal Club were the 12 graders and they are not in school anymore, the Journal club has been inactive for the major part of this year's first term. Fortunately, some current 11th graders have decided to use the Journal Club as their Student Initiated Project and want to revamp the club. They want to make the Journal Club more appealing for students, and in order to do so, they are planning on creating a website where students can read school news at any time.
This term, the Journal Club was not as active as last since the leaders of the club graduated.
Term 5
All throughout this term, I have worked really hard with the collaboration of the new Journal Club leaders to create a website for the student to read articles about the school. The worst part about this process, apart from the many hours of work, was the issue witht the website domain. At first, I could not find any website building sites that would allows to have our desired URL, and therefore, after searching, the option of Weebly was the most preferable).
The creation of the website took a couple of weeks of talking to the leaders about how to organize the site, and after that, the website was ready to be published. In order for younger generations of the Journal Club to continue editing the website, I held a small seminar in Library to teach them how to edit the site.
I hope the website will be a great success. I am eager to see the reaction from the school communicate and I hope the Journal Club continues to function as well as it does nowadays in the future.
Rebirth, planning meetings, creating website.
