Darren+helps+haiti

__**Our Group Wiki**__ - http://whs-haiti.wikispaces.com/Group+wiki-helping+haiti __ CHECK IT OUT!! __

__The Haiti7 YouTube page - []__ PLEASE CHECK IT OUT
__**Online survey:**__ [|www.surveymonkey.com/s/9RSBXJ6]Please complete the survey for your ideas and opinions

__Week 1 26/01/2010__ - Met the research project class and discussed what RPR was about. (Teacher and students)

__Week 2 02/02/2010__ - Teacher ran through what we had to do in the RPR lesson. - Picked the topic that we chose to do and group members. - (Chris, Vuong, Rohan, Onn, Ben, Anel and I) Chris came up with the idea and so our topic is now to research the Haiti incident, the organisation/people that are involded and for us to think of ideas on how we are able to help them. - I have started research on different organisations which have contributed to the Haiti earthquake.

__Week 3 08/02/2010__ Ms. McInnes showed us - How we were being assessed and the process we would follow during our RPR lessons (daily teacher checks etc). - various ways of researching our topic - animation/quiz showing us how we can prevent plagarism - how to properly include a bibliography (Harvard system) and showed us various links where we could check if it was properly done. - using wonder wheel on google - a sheet showing various topics that are possible research work and how we are being assesed. Group member Chris and I taught the class the basics of using Web Inspiration and Ms. McInnes explained how the class was able to beneift from this when brainstorming/perfecting ideas. Link to web inspiration: [|http://www.mywebspiration.com] Screenshot of a quick Webspiration project (Courtesy of Chris Chau)

__Week 4 19/02/2010__ Our group has finalized the job of each of our group members (jobs can be located in the previous post). The class went over to the library and listened to Mr. Noble talk about how we are able to make/present a good project and gave us feedback on our "Help Haiti" idea. - Our group member Vuong, created a fundraising page for people to donate to. [] __**PLEASE DONATE!**__ - Ms. McInnes gave the class a sheet about Blooms Taxonamy, showing the 6 levels of learning. - We have decided that our main research question will be, "Can any human support the Haiti victims?".

__Week 5 26/02/2010__ We have made an appointment to see Mrs. Bond about our fundraising idea's and Ben is working on a letter of proposal to her. Unfortunately when the Friday came, we were unable to make the appointment as we were not ready to see her which resulted in Ms. McInnes cancelling the appointment.

__Week 6 05/03/2010__ - Onn and Chris made a plan of our fundraising video, while other group members have tried to contact various teachers from Dance and Music. Chris has uploaded an updated mind map



- Ms. McInnes and I decided that I should type an email and distribute it to important teachers and see if we they were able to help us in any way. - Onn and I went to go and see the Home Ec. teachers. Mrs. Vause said that making a catering day were they made muffins or other various foods, would be a risky fundraising project because a percentage of what we made through sales would have to be given back to the Home Ec people to cover the cost of buying the ingredients. If the fundraising did not go very well then they we would be in debt, which is a risk Mrs, Vause does not want to take. I asked her for any other ideas and she said that it would be safer if we asked teachers or students for muffin orders and then take them to a bakery, we would be able to pay back a percentage of what we made. Onn and I thought that this was a safer option because we were guaranteed money when the teachers or student place an order.

We also went to go see Mrs. Bushby who (from a very reliable resource I cannot say) apparently does a fair amount of fundraising on the weekend. She suggested to us that we do a car wash and try to make posters showing the events that have occurred in Haiti. e.g. the haiti victims, debris on the ground etc.

- Group have come up with 10 interview questions. Here they are.. 1. How are you associated with the Haiti crisis?

2. How has your association benefited victims?

3. Who is assisting your organisation?

4. What can people do to help your organisation?

5. How long will you be there for?

6. What qualifications do you need to do to be part of this organisation?

7. Is there any way that we can help other than money?

8. How long do you think when the crisis will be over?

9. What are your thoughts about the crisis?

10. Will Haiti ever be the same?

- We were given access to the new EBSCO Host that our school paid for, giving us up to date information from various articles, books and other resources.

__Week 7 12/03/2010__ - Recieved a response from some of the teachers that we emailed and had a group get together and see what we could make from the email. Our other group memebers, Anel and Ben, also received an email from Medicins Sans Frontieres Australia, but have yet to receive a proper email response from them.

- During the lesson Ms. McInnes showed us a website explaining if a site we use will be credible or not. After using the site we noted that there were __** five ways to know if a website was credible or not. **__ - When looking at a site, ask yourself, Who made it?, When was it made?, How is the site?, Why was it made? and What for? - Check to see if the site has been qualified or not and that there is a date of publication, where they got the information and if the information on the page matches any other resources. - Take a look at the URL. Avoid using .com ending URL's as they aren't always credible. Try using sites that end in .org, .edu or .gov because chances are they have been approved by someone already. - Is the site easy to navigate? easy to read fonts? any typos or errors?. Even keeping your eyes peeled for minor things like that can tell if a site is good to use or not. - Check for when the site was last updated! That will ensure that you have the latest information.

__**If you have time check out the tutorial**__!! []

According to Onn and Rohan, Ms Sykes said we are not able to use our Casual Day fundraising idea because of some unexpected circumstances that have conflicted with the Term 2 casual day and are only allowed one casual day per term. After Onn suggested we do a raffle and have a prize for the winner, we have all decided that this will be another main point we will be focusing on and try to get this fundraising idea to work.

__Week 8__ Mrs Edwards came in and had a talk to our group. During the talk I noted down some notes. She.. - gave us advice on our ideas and what ideas are possible.eg "a couple of you should go and see Mrs. Scott" (quote from the talk) - giving information about some other issues in Haiti other then the earthquake itself such as "the absolute political corruption on haiti, bad management of money" (quoted from the talk) - speaking about money and how borrowing money does not always produce results. Mrs. Edwards using the metaphor "its like money pouring into a blackhole, money goes in but nothing comes out." She really liked our group and ideas aswell as the things we are doing to try and accomplish our goal.

__5 EBSCO Host articles__ [] I picked this article because after reading the information on the article, president Obama donated $1.53million USD (which he received from the nobel prize award) to the haiti earthquake, distrubuting the money into different areas. I can now see how one of the leaders of the world can help them and try to replicate that but on a smaller scale, e.g. fundrasing.

[] This article was very useful. It was a Question and Answer while a person was interviewing Scott Plantz. The articles main topic him charting the progress on medical care needs in Haiti. This article can give us an insight into the health of Haiti, as the interview title suggests.

[] An article from the New Zealand Herald, which tells a story of a mother who has lost her husband and 2 children. I decided to pick this article because it was a very touching story and what she did to save her 3rd child from the rubles of the hotel they were staying at.

[] The title of this article appealed to me because what this article talks about is how schools were helping Haiti. The students were able to raise $880 by doing some small fundrasing, which is similar to what our group is trying to achieve.

[] The final article I chose was one about the governor general from Canada, who donated $300 million to help the country rebuild themselves. This was a very inspiring article as she tries to do what she can to help the country, which lead me to posting the article on my Wiki.

=**__TERM 2__**=

__**Week 1**__ got back together after 2 week holiday. Finalized what was going to be on our video and what day to do it. Mrs. McInnes gave the class a Capacity Matrix sheet (DLSOPE).

__**Week 2**__ Created our Youtube Video, Give Hope, Life, Love, Faith and Support. We had finalized with Mrs. Edwards when our concert was going to be and had a talk with her about how we were going to get the money to buy the prize for the raffle which was the Ipod Nano.

Onn, Rohan and I went around the school to get a rough idea of how many students were willing to buy a ticket for the fund raising idea we came up with. Some negatives this week was that we had to re-email medicines sans frontier as they have not replied to us, which is very disappointing. Vuong (AirSok) created posters to advertise the concert and raffle and decided that we should go and stick them in popular areas throughout the school.
 * __Week 3__**

Group member Ben had gone and bought 400 raffle tickets from Arndale while Onn and Rohan had gone and stuck posters throughout the school as a way of advertising. We had rasied $143 after going around and selling them to teachers and students, while Vuong was editing a group video we made.
 * __Week 4__**

It is nearing our Haiti concert and we are in a rush to get all the plans in order to make sure the concert goes smoothly. We continued to sell raffle tickets and have made around $240 in 6 days only, which by my eyes is very impressive. (below is a graph of the money raised). Our concert was a great success after showing the video and found that it was very touching. The performances were great and it all went smoothly and according to plan. During this week we got together and decided to make a group presentation video which was part of our assessment. Some of the questions asked include.. - How we picked the topic - Who is in our group - Our background knowledge (Rohans research) - Primary sources (success and fails) - Advertising and concert Vuong has finished editing the video and is ready to present it. Hope that it all goes well and that the class enjoys it. On Tuesday during our group presentation I was not here, due to family reasons, but from what the group and what Mrs. McInnes told me, the presentation was a success. - During the week we also got a reply from our primary resource, Jack Reynolds from Free the Kids and has given us his time to answer the questions we have presented to him. Here is his response.
 * __Week 5__**
 * __Week 6__**
 * __Week 7 - was not here (Tuesday's lesson)__**

1) We started our project (caring for orphaned/abused/abandoned children) in Haiti in 1999. We statred with only 12 children and several teenagers to help. My brother-in-law (Fr. Marc Boisvert) went to Haiti at that time after visiting earlier and seeing the great poverty and need to help, especially the children. We are located 120 miles from Port-au-Prince the capital where the earthquake was most devastating. We have grown substanilially in 11 years. Before the earthquake we had 675 children in our village. The government brought more children to us after the quake and today we have 810. We also have 200 Haitian employees working and some living at our facility.

2). We have received more children whose parents were killed.

3). We are a private organization. By that I mean we are not a large international agency such as World Vision. But, in my opinion, we are much more effective because we do not have a large staff in the U.S. Only 2 people. Our organization in the States is called FreeTheKids.org. We exist only to support Pwoje Espwa in Haiti. We receive funds from groups (Rotary Club, etc.) churches (of all denominations) and mostly from individuals.

4. The best way to help is to support us financially. 96% of all funds go directly to support the children, the school, the clinic etc.

5. We started our project in 1998. We plan to be serving the children of Haiti for as long as the need is there.

6. To be a volunteer at Espwa in Haiti, an application needs to be submitted. One of the requirements is the ability to speak French -- hopefully Creole. The children and staff (except for Fr. Marc) do not speak English.

7. There is really no other way to help. Shipping fees and customs fees are extremely high. And by purchasing locally we help the economy.

8,9,10. I believe Haiti will be in crisis for the next 20 years. If any tropical storms hit Haiti this summer, it will be devastating. There are 1.5 million homeless living in tents which will not survive flooding. Our project is one of the most successful in Haiti. With funding we would like to implement our model to other sections of the country. It's very difficult when 60% of the population is illiterate. Two things need to be established for the county to move forward -- a good educational system and enforcement of the rule of law. Right now the UN has 9000 troops in country. They will have to be there for a long time until a security system can be established.

Our mind map updater, Chris Chau has upload an updated mindmap showing what we have further accomplished. This is our final mind map since it is nearing the end of assessment. Our group wiki updater (me) has also presented his final wiki update which can be seen at the top of the page. Here it is, our you can check it out on his wiki. This is our last week for the Research Project group! During this week I listened to other students in the class present their presentation and then gave them a rating in the discussion page. Mrs. McInnes gave me a project assessment evaluation sheet and instructed us to work on the 6 DeBono hats, the Red Hat, the Yellow Hat, the Black Hat, the Green Hat, the White Hat and the Blue Hat.
 * __Week 8__**

=__Debono's 6 thinking hats__= __Red Hat – Emotion__ During this project I felt that this was an enjoyable experience but was also stressful and was very nerve racking especially when it was close to concert time and when making the video. __Yellow Hat – Good Points__ Some good points about doing this project was learning about various aspects of Haiti and what had happened. I learned how to find some primary sources and how to use an incredible site called Wikispaces which I have never used before. The fund raising idea and concert idea was a great way of finding some positive outcomes. __Black Hat – Bad points__ A major bad point was when we had our concert, a teacher decided to have a year 11 and 12 meeting which interfered with our concert times. This posed as a problem for our group which meant that we had to rush the preparations for the concert, but just managed to get everything done. The raffle tickets were also a bit high which meant that students were put off by the pricing and had very minimal kids buying them. __Green Hat – Creativity__ During this project we had come up with great ideas such as wrist bands, a car wash, selling muffins and other various ideas but we weren’t able to implement them because of cost issues etc. __White Hat – Information__ To properly understand the task at hand, we needed to fully understand what had happened in Haiti. This meant that we had to do some background research beforehand. Overall I think that the knowledge I gained from this project was very valuable. __Blue Hat – Organization of thinking__ I think that the choices we made for our group is what made our group as successful and enjoyable as it is. If it were any different the overall outcome could have changed a lot.