Annual Plan 2012

 

Annual Plan 2012

Kidlink Association
Established 2011/12/30

 

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." The Document, once approved by the Annual Meeting 2012 will be made public from the Kidlink Association main page at http://www.kidlink.org/drupal/AM-2012.

Kidlink Association Financial Plan 2012

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

Board Meetings

  • We have used Skype for our Board meetings. Skype runs well. We will try our Drupal chat service in 2012 and eventually move our meetings to this new chat.

Kidlink Association Membership and Sponsorship

  • Further efforts must be made to get more members to the Kidlink Association. A working Kidlink Project depends on the support of paying members. Single person sponsors are also welcome.

Kidlink Dialog and Documentation

  • The Kidlink Association (KA) member dialog will be moved from Google groups, over to the Drupal Content Management System (CMS) KA-member Forum.
  • Kidlink Listserv Kidlink list will continue to be the main tool for email announcements for the Project members.
  • Skype will continue to be the interactive dialog service until we find an adequate Drupal Content Management System (CMS) Chat Module.
  • All the working documentation for the KA Board, like meeting agendas, accounting spreadsheets will continue to be created in Google Documents. All the Board members share these documents.
  • We will continue to be visible on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/groups/29537164537/

The Kidlink Site

  • Kidspace and the Drupal CMS will be more and more integrated with each other. We hope to be able to let all users login through the Drupal CMS login and then be given access to Kidspace.
  • The migration to the Drupal CMS will continue. We are moving Student activities over to Drupal CMS. While Project Student works will continue to be published on Kidspace as long as it is needed, Student Forum, chat and other interactive dialogs will be moved over to Drupal CMS.
  • From plan 2011:  More and more youth connect with their smart-phones. We must have a mobile version of the Kidlink site.
  • Kidspace services will be improved: i.e. the editor is not working well. We have to figure out how to get a better editor.
  • The Kidspace menu will be made similar to the Drupal cms menu. This will create less confusion.

Privacy and Security

  • Efforts are moving forward to continuously updated web security issues and improve user privacy and security.

Registration

  • Teachers will be able to register into the Drupal CMS.
  • It is very important that kids know they can help make a better future for all. They can start by doing small things in their family, neighborhood and school. We are very happy to say that we have been getting better answers from the four registration questions this year. Teachers are doing a great work. Nice, very nice!

Collaboration

  • The Collaboration with ICollaboratory will continue

Language areas

  • English, Catala and Italian areas are alive and display some projects in their own languages. 

Youth engagement

  • We must continue our efforts to engage youth in the development of a global dialog.

Projects

  • Teachers need dates and information about what is needed /expected in terms of what software is needed, for the projects. Projects will therefore be promoted on the main drupal site with a calendar with specific dates and links to information. They will also be promoted via Facebook, email, and Twitter so teachers will have time to register their students and understand the amount of time needed for each project.
  • Kidlink possess a large number of projects in its archive. It's impossible to promote all because of a few coordinators. So every year we must decide which projects can go along also allowing for coordinators preferences and teachers curriculum. Furthermore some old projects need to be updated to be again attractive. Even if all our projects are available, next year we will try to promote these projects too:
  • The Multicultural Calendar Project (MCC) has been one of the most requested and successful Kidlink projects. American Public Schools are required to have a Cultural Diversity Committee. This Committee is responsible for educating employees and students about different cultures. This is probably one of the reasons of the MCC popularity online. We will dedicate time to develop MCC and have it running again.
  • Stats for Math Cat’s. This project developed by Joyce Fisher, was very successful during 2011. We will develop this project further. More emphasis is needed on students determining how to build the graphs (frequency and percentage graphs) on their own data collection. The enquiry questions answer data must invite to dialog while statistical calculations (median, average, range, mode) must be able to be done. The students should be prompted to interpret, analyze and value the graphs of the collaborating school class.  Participants in the 2011 project:  Approximately 120 students and 6 teachers were involved in the project.
  • The Kidlink Video Project. Kidlink has a few video projects on http://www.youtube.com/user/KidlinkProject. The Board will look closer at this service and eventually host student video contributions.
  • The KidArt Project needs to be revitalized. It needs a new coordinator to support the kids' creativity and have it running again.
  • Project Forum:  We will try to create different forum for each project in Drupal to allow teachers to coordinate their activity.