This is going to be a quick blog post as this is just a check in on my progress. I feel like Kate and I are at a good place right now. We have an order form set up along with a website. We have picked recipes and we hope to start making treats in the next week. Everything seems to be going as planned. One concern I have is the making of the treats. Kate and I have very busy schedules so we have to find enough time to make them. We have people who are ready to start buying treats and we also need to prepare for the food truck festival. Hopefully we are able to start selling them soon. Another upcoming objective is to start a fundraiser with my school's rotary club. As a member of the board for the club, I brought up the idea to the teacher who runs it and she said we will discuss what she can do. Everything looks good for the project as of now and I can't wait to keep going!
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Welcome back to another week of blogging. Before I get back into everything I want to apologize for this blog post. It possibly get a bit angry at times. The reason is that I had just finished writing this blog post when I accidentally deleted it. It was a 450-word, well written blog post and then it vanished and I can't get it back. Now I have to write it all again so you can imagine that I'm a bit frustrated. The rant is now over and it's time to get back to the project. As for how I am feeling about this project right now, I have mixed emotions. A few days ago I felts as if I was at the low point of my project. I didn't feel any motivation to get things done and I felt as If i was wasting my time. I was thinking of things i should have done instead. Overall, I was filled with utter despair due to my project. However, that only lasted a few days and now I am back on track. I still don't think the project is as amazing as it once was, but I no longer despise it. I would consider that an improvement. Let's move on to what Kate and I have been up to over the past few weeks. First off, we met with our mentor and he said we probably shouldn't sell the shirts as they would not make a large profit. Even though that really was a major aspect of the original project, I understand where he is coming from. It could be hard to sell enough shirts to actually make money. He said we should focus on the treats instead. Secondly he also implied that we should make this a more long term project. He feels as if we should first give out the treats for free in order to make a name for ourselves first. We should let people try out our treats first and then we can possibly earn a following. In order to make some funds at the food truck festival, he recommended just putting out a donation box. Finally, he also said to make sure our name has not been used before. I looked it up and it turns out "Pals with Paws" was not as original as I had previously thought. There are so any variations of this name that are being used by companies across the country. This means that Kate and I have to come up with a new name. As we get closer and closer to the end of this project, I am learning what I want to achieve for myself. I want to learn the importance of cooperation and I hope that by the end of this I will be better working in a team. I also hope that this project improves my time management. I feel like I am already learning about this as Kate and I prepare for the food truck festival. Speaking of time management, there is one area of the project that I have not been doing well fitting into my schedule. The research paper that accompanies this project had not even crossed my mind until last week. I completely forgot about that. Back in blog post #4, I had listed three questions I had hoped would guide my research:
Here we are again! Another week and another blog post. I've been thinking about how my project is going compared to my project from last year. I realized how little I actually did for my project last year. I think having a partner is one of the main reasons I am getting more things done. I more accountable for what I do and I want to make sure I do my share of the work. For example, last year I would blog and I would basically have nothing to write about. However, this year I have something new to talk about every week. Kate and I are constantly doing things to work on our project. We have been sending out emails and making the treats. We have also found a mentor (the graphic design teacher at our school) who will be helping us design our shirts. We will be meeting with him for the first time next week and we can hopefully come to a conclusion on the design of the shirts. He will also be helping us be a part of the food truck festival at our school. He has been very understanding about our busy schedules and for that I am so thankful. He has been very patient with us and I am happy to have him as our mentor. Moving forward we hope to set up an Etsy page where we can sell our treats and also start our booster campaign for the shirts. I feel like if we want to get the word out there we should also consider starting an Instagram page in order to spread the word about our project, but I will have to talk to Kate about that. Links for pictures: picture 1 Picture 2 Here we are again! It's time to get back to blogging. Kate and I have been able to get a lot done in the past weeks. We have been sending emails and coming up with new ideas. We have been getting together almost every weekend to work on this project and reach out to people. We have found a mentor which is the major thing we have accomplished. He is the graphic design teacher at our school and he will be helping us with the design of our shirts. He also has been providing information to us about the food truck festival that our school is hosting. This festival is a large event at our school where there will be a bunch of vendors and food trucks as well. I believe there will also be live music. We have decided that this will be where our final project takes place. We will set up a booth where we sell the shirts as well as our treats. We will have brochures from the rescue we are donating to featured at our booth as well. This will give us the opportunity to show our products to a wide variety of people. One other thing that has happened in the past two weeks is that Kate and I had to give a presentation of our project to a group of teachers. We talked about what exactly we planned to do, our motivation behind the project, and how we planned to accomplish our goal. I feel like these presentations really helped us realize where we needed to improve our idea. For example, one teacher told us that we needed to try to promote our products more. She felt that our project would not be as successful unless we really put ourselves out there. This made us realize that we do need to be more aggressive in selling our tees and treats. We have decided that we might want to look into other places to sell our products. Kate and I are now considering reaching out to one of our local pet supply shops to see if we could work with them in some way. We are also considering putting our treats up for sale on Etsy. This would allow us to reach a broader audience outside of our community. In conclusion, Kate and I have gotten a lot done, but we still have a lot to figure out. Hopefully we are able to stay on top of our schedule. Speaking of that schedule, here it is: February 6 Deliverables: Blog post #1 (continue weekly, 150 words or so) February 20 Deliverables: Blogpost #3 on research into your topic. Preliminary findings, feasibility, etc.--Complete project template March 16 Deliverables: Project Pitch--see handout: Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose (AMP) Search for a Mentor If project is approved, complete the full 20 Time Proposal document. (see the “About” section of our Classroom page) For March 28 March 21 Deliverables: Project underway, Research is underway; or revision of project; Blog post #5. Mentor search is going on now. Make dog treats, set up an Etsy page, create tags with t-shirt info for the bags April 4 Deliverables: Video Blog pitch (AMP handout) April 18 Deliverables: Blog #6--progress, research, images of progress May 2 Deliverables: Blog #8 May 16 Deliverables: Blog #10 May 30 Deliverables: Projects due...or next week. Since the food truck festival is in June, we will only be able to give updates/new information about the festival and our project Hey there and welcome to blog post #4! I actually got something done this week which is something to be proud of. Kate and I got together this weekend to talk more about our project. We sent out an email to a possible mentor and started looking into the design of the t-shirt. It seems like we have a good start to our project and we are finally getting things done. Speaking of the mentor, we reached out to an animal shelter in hopes of getting them to help us. We were thinking that it might be possible for them to stay in contact with us throughout the project. We also asked them about being a part of one of their upcoming events so we could get our project seen by more people. We are currently waiting on a response from them so hopefully they get back to us soon. In the future, we have to start looking into what we will want to do our research on. In order to do this we need three driving questions. I think that these are my possible questions
Looking ahead, Kate and I must figure out when we want to start the campaign and start selling the treats and shirts. We also have to wait for a response from the shelter we contacted. If they say no or we don't get a reply, we will then have to find another mentor.
That's it for today! Hope you enjoyed this weekly update! -Emily Welcome back to another blog post! Another week has gone by and here I am again. Since last time, Kate and I have been discussing our names for our campaign. One thing we thought of today was the phrase "Pals with Paws". This could possibly be the slogan we use on the shirts and on tags for the treats. It would give something for people to remember our campaign by.
Another source of progress for me is that I set up a twitter account that I will use to post about the progress of the project and what is happening with it. You can find it by clicking here. It was just created so there is nothing to really see yet, but I will hopefully be posting soon. While it will likely mainly be focused on this project, I might also talk about my Gifted English class as well and talk about the books we are reading. For example, we are currently reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and I might post about that. As for what is next, Kate and I need to find a mentor. We had the idea of asking someone from an animal shelter to help us. They could aid us in figuring out how we should spread awareness about the cause and get people to support it. We will likely have to be in contact with them within the next few weeks so we can get the most out of their help as possible. We also need to get down to the specifics of the project. We have the broad idea of what we want to do, but haven't talked much about the specifics. Kate and I need to figure out how we will actually be able to complete this project and figure out how we can make it successful. At this point in the process, I am feeling pretty good about the project. We are starting to figure things out and I am excited to start. But as we all know, we are still in the honeymoon phase of the project. It seems great right now, but it could go down hill quickly. -Emily Hey there! Welcome to my second blog post for the 20-time project (which is about raising money for an animal shelter to fight animal cruelty). It has been about a week since I last posted and not much has changed since then. I know I should have started to actually do some research and get ahead, but that obviously didn’t happen. Unfortunately, 20-Time was the least of my worries as I stressed over homework and upcoming tests. So I’m sorry about that. However, it is now set in stone that I will be working with my friend, Kate, on this project. She will likely be in charge of the making of the dog treats and I will be in charge of my idea which was making the shirts. We will likely supervise each other as well so it is not like we are doing two separate projects and just combining them in the end. As for research, I have looked up campaigning and how to raise awareness for a cause. I learned that one obvious, but also extremely useful, way is to just put it out on social media. In a time where most people have a smartphone or access to the internet, social media is a part of many’s everyday lives. By putting it on a social media platform such as twitter or instagram, it can reach more people than it would by just hanging flyers or spreading it verbally. In the next few weeks I want to decide more on what we are going to be actually doing. Are we going to host an event or just sell the shirts and treats? I also want to start thinking about a catchy campaign slogan as that is crucial for a good fundraiser.
Looking ahead, I think I like where this project will go. It is something I am passionate about and I feel like it is something that I could be proud of. I am imagining how we could make this into more than just selling shirts and treats. If we tried and it was plausible, we could do something really cool with our ideas. Hey there! This is a place where I will be talking about my 20-Time project. If you don't know, the 20-Time project is something where we spend 20% of our class time working on a project. This year our projects are going to be based around social issues. For example, my project is going to be about fair treatment of animals and animal cruelty. I will be making shirts online and selling them. The profits made on these shirts will then be donated to a charity or an animal rescue. I also might work with a friend who had the idea of selling dog treats and then donating the money to charity that benefits animals. We are thinking that since our ideas are similar, we could work together and make an even better project.For my research, I would likely look up marketing or something about animals. The motivation behind my project is that I love animals and want to do what I can to help them. As an owner of three dogs, I hate seeing dogs being mistreated and there are many charities out there that are fighting animal cruelty. If I can help them, I will do the best I can to fund raise and spread awareness. As for the final project, I am not sure what it would be. I was considering going to a shelter and taking pictures and making a photo story. We could take pictures of the animals and then use them to show the impact of animal cruelty as many of these animals can come from bad homes or have been mistreated. That's all I have for today. I will be updating this blog often about my progress with the project and what I am researching. - Emily |