We met with Nelson, director of HAF’s Latino Youth In Action program as well as peer youth educators in the program, at their headquarters in the Bronx. At the meeting we learned more about the program, and discussed the needs and goals of the program, in terms of our group project. We listened to the experiences of peers in the program, and solicited their feedback in terms of how we could best serve the program’s needs using online and social media tools. LYIA allowed us to take a copy of their classroom curriculum for us to work off of for our project.

Afterward, we met in Harlem to discuss our project goals and implementation, and to divide the curriculum between group members to look over and become familiar with, so that we could later begin to draft a complete project plan.  At the meeting with LYIA, we were informed that they were currently working on an updated version of their classroom curriculum, that would be divided into specific subject areas.  The person responsible for the new curriculum was unavailable; Lora agreed to try to contact him in order to find out some more about what the updated curriculum would entail, specifically the new categories (so that we might implement this into the structure of our project).  Toward the end of the meeting, we wrote an email to Jason outlining our preliminary thoughts and goals for the project:

“Jason,

Our group (#2) has met with HAF/LYIA and we subsequently had a group meeting. They provided us with their old curriculum which they are currently updating. They were not entirely clear on what their needs are regarding what/how online elements would serve them but were very excited at the prospect. Given this, creating online interactive learning modules as you previously suggested might not be what would serve them best. What they need is a) a way to enhance certain parts of their curriculum (currently being updated) via social media tools as well as b) an online component that will allow people who miss parts of
the training to catch up before the next class or simply go back to for review. Given this, our group suggests to revise the project this way:

1) For each component of the curriculum, suggests social media tools that will make the training more interactive.
2) Create lesson plans for each component on how to use the suggested social media tools. For example, component B might benefit from video skits uploaded onto a blog. We would make a lesson plan outlining this and why we think it makes sense, as well as how to do it.
3) Work with HAF/LYIA on implementing one of these social media tools(i.e. blog).

Please let us know if you think we are going in the right direction.

Regards,
Lora, Jenny, Caroline”