Annual report 2012

Annual Report 2012

Kidlink Association
Established 2012/12/30

 

AofA Art 5 says: "The Board's Annual Report and Financial Statement must be sent to the members together with the notice to the Annual Meeting." Once approved by the Annual Meeting 2013, the Document will be made public from the Kidlink Association main page at http://www.kidlink.org/drupal/AR-2012

The Annual Report reports to the Kidlink Association members about activities during 2012 and how the Board has worked to realize the plans for 2012 as documented in http://www.kidlink.org/drupal/AP-2012

Kidlink Association Financial Report 2012

  • Kidlink Association Financial Report 2012 is sent as a separate document.

Board Meetings

  • The Board had 6 ordinary Board meetings during 2012 and the minutes have been shared with the members in the Kidlink Association Google group.
  • The Board had also several informal meetings in Skype.

Kidlink Association Membership and sponsorship

  • We have not succeeded in getting more KA members and individual sponsors. During 2012 we had 26 members.
  • 3711SEK were donated by members.

Kidlink Dialog and documentation

  • To inform about our website,  start projects and tell about our activities we created a Facebook Group in June 2012. We have now 101 members. Several new teachers  have been involved in the projects by this group.
  • We created a new Facebook group called Kidlink Italia to spread more our Italian projects  and improve a better dialogue among Italian teachers. We have now131 members. 
  • Until June 2012 when a teacher registered to Kidlink he/she is registered to https://groups.google.com/group/kidlink and so we used Google groups to promote the dialogue between leaders and teachers until June 2012.
  • Then we decided to try FB as tool to promote Kidlink and its projects. We realized that many people prefer not only to  get news but also communicate via chat or comments in FB.
  • There are now still 461 adult members in Google group but there is only a little activity. 
  • The Board used https://groups.google.com/group/kidlink-board for its email dialog and we continue to use it.
  • All Kidlink Association members are registered to https://groups.google.com/group/kidlink-association. All the Board meeting minutes were shared through this group.
  • There are 3993 subscribers in the Kidlink Official Announcement Listserv list (07/12 2012). We have sent 3 announcement emails to our Kidlink listserv list advertising about projects and formerly others about becoming members, sponsors and volunteers.
  • We had two chat rooms open in Skype: “KA-BOARD” for the Board and “Kidlink Project Dialog” for project dialogs.
  • Kidlink has an official email, info (at) kidlink.net maintained previously at www.networksolutions.com. Info (at) kidlink.org has been used by people for cooperation requests. 
  • The Kidlink Twitter account (https://twitter.com/KidlinkProject) has been used only a few times, for announcements for Math Cats and Diamond Poem projects, mainly before March. We plan to increase its our effective use of Twitter in the coming year.

The Kidlink Site

Privacy and Security

  • All user passwords in Kidspace are now secured with  hash and salt technique.

Registration

  • Registration Handbook:  We have not done revisions to our Registration Handbook.
  • Since 1/1 2012, 60 adults joined Kidlink.
  • Since 1/1 2012 507 students joined the Kidlink project.

 Language areas

  • Only the Catalan area has been updated now and then as there are some running projects in Català. Many Kidlink projects are still available in Italian or spanish .

Youth Engagement

  • Our Board youth representative elected at the Annual Meeting 2012, could not continue as a Board member because of school work. We have not been able to find another youth.

Collaboration

  • The collaboration between Kidlink and ICollaboratory has continued during 2012 with the "Moon over us" project.

Projects

  • Projects are promoted on the main drupal site www.kidlink.org/drupal with a calendar with specific dates and links to information. They are also promoted via Facebook, email and Twitter, so teachers have time to register their students and understand the amount of time needed for each project. (from Plan 2012)
  • New updated projects: we have updated and launched 2 projects from our Archive: Draw a Story for you and What's my number
  • About participation to the projects during 2011/2012: a large number of students and teachers took part in Kidlink projects during 2011-12. They have been involved in "ECards", "Diamond Poema", "Landmark Game", "I describe me, you draw me", "Acrostics", "Moon over us" and in "Stat for Cool Math Cats".
  • During the projects students shared very significant pages with images and texts and they developed good relationship with their pairs writing many and many comments. Teachers were very efficient in approving the students' comments in a short time, allowing so a profitable and frequent communication.
  • Communication during the project: We created forum for each running project, but as there is no email alert function yet, not all use it regularly. Teachers use more often private email, FB or Skype to communicate with coordinator.
  • Application Form: We created a new tool to inscribe to the projects, this form is linked to Teachers Guidelines.
  • Working Projects are: I describe me, you draw me, Ecards, Diamond Poema, Acrostics, Landmark Game, Stat for Cool Math Cats, What's my number?, Draw a story for me, WAI?. Some of these projects are ready to start in January or February, some others have been carried out from October and are finishing these days.
  • Kidcom chat rooms: Many students, once registered to Kidlink, try to use our chat but there are only a few people inside and so they leave. Despite various urgings and suggestions, kids go on writing nonsense in Kidcom chat. This behavior does not help them rise and increase a mutual dialogue. Domenico and Joyce control the chat regularly.

Volonteers

  • There are two new teachers helping in Kidlink even if they are not yet KA members. Larisa Tarasevich from Russia is doing an important work in order to spread Kidlink in Russia by articles and other ways. Larisa and Terry Smith went in November to a Seattle conference where they presented Landmark Game in Kidlink. Lidia Pantaleo from Italy is helping to improve our teachers contacts in Italy and we are launching some of our Italian projects by a new FB group in Italian called Kidlink Italia. Joyce Fischer did a great work updating and moving MCC project info to Drupal. David Donat  continues to deal with projects in Catalan and he involved a new teacher as helper. Theresa Allen is very active promoting Kidlink activities in the USA schools and in some websites.