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Welcome!. as you enter, please feel free to visit our workshop blog at newmediacw2010.wordpress.com have a look around and post a response. Computers & Writing 2010 Purdue University. New Media for Non-Profits a service-learning course. Charlotte Boulay Christine Modey
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Welcome! as you enter, please feel free to visit ourworkshop blog at newmediacw2010.wordpress.com have a look around and post a response
Computers & Writing 2010 Purdue University New Media for Non-Profitsa service-learning course Charlotte Boulay Christine Modey Sweetland Center for Writing University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
We have to provide instruction in the contexts that will prepare our students for the brave new world they are entering—not just so they can survive, but because they might make it better. --Lillian Bridwell Bowles
SWC200: New Media for Non-Profits Video, audio, and web pages all provide powerful tools for non-profit organizations. In this service-learningcourse, students combine traditional persuasive writing strategies with new media to help local non-profit organizations createrhetorically effectiveshort documentary videos, audio documentaries, and/or web-based projects that tell the organizations’ stories while meeting their informational and promotional needs.
Course outline The mission of non-profits Non-profits and social media Purpose and audience; creating personae Story-telling and the three rhetorical appeals Polishing the project; peer workshop Project presentations
Course components (weight) Project (50%) Project proposal (20%) Weekly blog entries (15%) In-class project presentation (5%) Final exam (10%)
In SWC 200 I hope to broaden my view and knowledge of non profits through a different perspective and learn more about the local non profits that benefit Ann Arbor residents. Furthermore, I am excited to find ways in which to use new media to expand the businesses of many non-profit organizations.
I also hope to learn how to build a community on a non profit organization’s website, whether it be by the audience answering questions on the site, commenting on a figure, or communicating with each other. I also would love to learn how to attract volunteers, especially young ones through social media networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, if desired by the organization.
I would like to learn about posting video on web-sites in a way that makes it easy to use and dependable. I would also like to become more acquainted with the blogosphere and understand how to utilize some social networking tools such as Twitter.
I hope that I am able to gain a better understanding of the issues facing the non-profit organization I am working with and help to solve those problems.
Non-Profit Communications: Goals • Enact social change • Raise money • Reach and/or expand target audience of donors • Move supporters from donors to investors • Increase volunteer involvement • Create communities • Inform the public
Non-Profit Communications: Audiences • Potential / current donors • Potential / existing volunteers • Grant agencies • Users--often a double audience (Food Gatherers) • Different demographics within audiences (moms, single men, religious organizations, volunteers, for-profit donors)
Speaking of audience(s) . . . try a persona
Creating personae to understand audience • Identify a non-profit organization that you're familiar with and list all its major audiences. • Imagine a new media writing project you might create for the organization: a video, a podcast, a website, a blog, etc. • Then, take about five minutes to create a persona for a potential reader who is a member of one of the major audiences. Think about • Key phrases or quotes (for or by that person) • Experience, expertise • Emotions • Values • Technology • Social and cultural environments • Demographics
How might the persona you created shape the project you propose?
Non-Profit Communications: Technologies Infrastructure challenges/realities: • Little money and IT support • Non-profits often don't have a new media (or communications) strategy • "There are definitely some drawbacks to new media writing if only because new media is so new that there isn't a great sense as to how they can be utilized the most effectively." Benefits: • There are lots of free tools that only require time investment • A relatively small learning curve • 8 weeks is actually enough to create a helpful project
Examples of student work back to the blog
Facilitating peer feedback In person: • have students read and comment on each other's proposals • have students view and comment on each other's projects in class • weekly check-in, for project progress/problem solving Online: • Backboard--a website (or document) written annotation tool • VoiceThread--an audio, video, or written annotation tool • Jing—screencasting (n) • Require students to respond to each other's blogs
Evaluating student work • Include a section of the proposal to articulate what success would look like • Compare end product with original proposals: have to account for changes in their reflection • Evaluate things that are within student control; emphasize the level of thought in a project rather than technical execution • Challenge 1: decide how much input your non-profit partner will have • Challenge 2: evaluating group projects
With the evolution of Web 2.0 content, charities are able to think of communication not only as a way to speak to their audience, but as a way to interact with their audience. . . . The non-profit can detail what they are doing as usually, but unique to Web 2.0 is that a non-profit’s audience can easily contact the non-profit and other supporters on their thoughts and ideas for the organization.
The project as a whole was extremely tedious and time consuming, but well worth it. This wasn’t a project that I could BS and throw together at the last minute but was an assignment that will truly have beneficial effects if completed properly. Therefore I put my as much effort as I could into the project in hopes that it will help Will Work For Food grow and advance as an organization.
In school and other institutional realms, there is often someone keeping tabs or grading your performance. With this project, there have been many times when I could have dropped it and my life would not have been impacted significantly. But in the real world, the adult world, no one is there to tell you to be great, to do your best. If one wants to rise to their full potential, they will have to do the work themselves and find the motivation from within.
Sometimes, people in charge may not want those who are not members of their community to take on a big role such as creating a website because it may not comply with all the original organizations’ guidelines. . . . Although it was slightly frustrating, I was certainly pleased to learn that this was the reality of non profits, and things may never go the way you want them to.
Furthermore, in practicing writing concisely and clearly (and even using new media tools to do that) I now see that I need to develop a greater conscientiousness about working with other people: working with their timelines, working ahead of their timelines, and communicating concisely early on. This class has whet my appetite to seek new ways to improve myself, and new media to conquer.”
New Media for Non-Profits Top Ten
Combining service with academic work is a way for us to manifest our values as educators and citizens. Service learning provides students a new way to think about writing. Perhaps for the first time, students realize that reading and writing are more than a packet of skills. They come to see literacy not only as a way of succeeding in the academy, but as acting in the world.--Thomas Deans and Zan Meyer-Goncalves
