Berniehoward’s Weblog

Friday Computer Group

This is my final week of work placement and I cant believe how quick the time  has gone. I really enjoyed it and feel I have learned a lot from the different activities I have been   involved in over the past twelve weeks.   Tuesday was the Blanchardstown Youth Citizenship Awards night in the Driocht in Blanchardstown.   We had a great night.    There were thirty different project entries and Mulhuddart Community Youth Project got 2nd and 3rd place. Second place was our Friday Computer Group.  For the project the kids did  a video on crime. They called it “Crime Watch”.  Myself and Denise helped them write out their storyboards, shoot the video and edit it in Imovie. They now progress to the regional competition and if they get through that round they will be in the national competition which will be shown on TV3.

Cover Photo

On Thursday we needed to take a photo for the cover of the Anniversary Brochure which is being sent to print this week. Below is a link to the brochure pdf.

Mulhuddart 10 year copy

Even though I am finished work placement at MCYP I will be returning to finish work on the anniversary project.   We still have to complete the video to be shown on the day and a banner advertisement.      Myself and Denise will also be continuing with our Wednesday Photography Group.

On Monday we went on a trip to Dublin Zoo with our Photography Group. Shane picked us up in the club bus and dropped us there  at about 11a.m. It was a good day and the kids really enjoyed themselves. We all took lots of photos of the different animals and we had a look at the baby gorilla. We brought a packed lunch with us for all the kids and had a picnic. When we got back to the centre we uploaded all the photos ( and there was a lot) from the different cameras. After the Easter break we will be making frames for the best of the photos and will display them on the walls of the main hall at the anniversary celebration in June.

Tuesday was the closing date for the BYCA entries so Mulhuddart Community Centre was very busy. All the kids from the different groups were in finishing and submitting their projects. The awards night will be 3rd May which is the day we come back after the Easter break.

On Wednesday Denise and I went down to Blanchardstown and worked on the video project. We had collected  lots of footage from all the different activities going on over the past 10 weeks and we put them  all together using Final Cut Pro. This video will have to be finished when we get back from the break as this will be our last week on work placement. We also had a look a designs for invitations which we also have to do after the break.

This week was the last week to finish entries for the Blanchardstown Youth Community Awards and Mulhuddart Community Centre was a hive of activity.  There were boards everywhere, people looking for glue, glitter and paint. Denise and I were supplying photos to all the different groups. On Wednesday we took photos and video footage of our Photography Group preparing their boards. On Thursday we went to Templeogue to collect key rings which the kids filled with photos of animals from the zoo. They all took 10 key rings each and sold them in their schools and to their friends and family. They made €150 for charity.  On Friday the Thursday After School Group had their cake sale over in the school. They had baked lots of different cakes over in the centre the previous day. It went very well and they were very happy with the money they raised. We took lots of photos.

This week went so fast maybe its because there was a lot going on. All of the different clubs this week were doing up their boards for their BYCA projects. On these boards they need to document everything that happened from the beginning of the project to the end. They decorate the boards with fancy writing and photographs. So Denise and myself were busy taking all the photos. On Wednesday we had our Photography Group and  they did all the typing to go on their boards. Next week we will take the photos. Because the closing date for the BYCA entries is 18th April,2011 and that is the day we are going to the Zoo myself and Denise agreed to print photos we had taken in the Zoo on a previous occasion so the kids could make up the key rings and sell them in time. The photos they take on the day will be put into photo frames and sold at a later date.

On Thursday Hugh came to see us. We had a meeting with himself, Shane and Karen. It went very well and I think Hugh was impressed with the work we have done to date.

This week there was great excitement at Mulhuddart. Everyone was very busy getting ready for different events they were organizing for their BYCA awards.  The Tuesday afters school group, otherwise known as “Something Cool For After School” ran their “Happy Saturday” event.   At the event they sold jars which they had painted and filled with sweets, t-shirts they had painted and cakes they had baked. They also had different fun events like face painting and singstar.   

At our Photography Group the group decided they wanted to raise money for Dublin Zoo for their BYCA project. It was decided we would take them to the Zoo to take lots of photos on Monday 18th April.  They will then print the best of their photos and put them into frames which they will make themselves. They also want to make keyrings.

The policy of Foróige is to empower young people to do things for themselves, so even though you might want to do things for them, you need to encourage them to do it themselves. So they went online to get a price for buying keyrings and made phone calls to different company’s. They also looked up the price of kits to make frames for the photos.  Next week they will need to fill out the BYCA booklet which is no easy task and make up project boards explaining exactly what they did. The booklet and boards are what is sent in to be judged for the award.  

On Friday we had a meeting in Blanchardstown with the anniversary committee about the brochure. It went very well. We decided on things like what font to use for the brochure cover and the font for the rest of the brochure.  All that is left to do now is to put in some final pages of photos. Looking forward to finishing the brochure now and moving on to other things. I have learned a lot from this project. I can see now where the theory I studied in college comes into play. How important it is to have all the assets you need before you start a project. When we started this brochure about five week ago we were given many photos to sort through which were to be included in the brochure. Now five weeks later we are still getting photographs to included in the brochure. It is very time consuming when you have to keep changing things you thought were complete. It has been a great experience and along the way I have also learned a new application (in-design). Denise and I are very pleased with the end product.

We had a  good week this week our meeting with the committee for the anniversary project went very well. Everyone seemed to like the brochure. We have just a few changes to make but nothing major. They wanted certain photos added and some slight changes to the text but overall the feedback was very positive. We have been asked  to design invitations for the celebration so as soon as we have the brochure out of the way we will get started on that.

We also worked with the children on their BYCA award projects. The Friday group are doing a video of a robbery and a kidnap to show the consequences of crime. We helped them with the filming and we also filmed them ourselves for the video clips we have to produce for the awards night.

This week was a short week because of the bank holiday. We spent most of our time this week working on the brochure. The Youth Officers e-mailed us information and photos as they got them and we put them into the brochure. It is starting to come together now and we are very pleased with the result. We hope to get it finished within the next two weeks. We will supply the committee with a draft copy of the brochure to date next Friday. They will give us feedback, we will then make any changes needed and hopefully it will be then sent to head office for approval.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we went to different clubs to take video footage  and photographs of the members for the Citizenship Awards competition they are entering. When we have enough footage of all the clubs entering the competition we will then edit them down in the club house in Blanchardstown with Shane. The plan is to make small two minute clips of each club so that when they are accepting their award the footage will be shown in the background of them doing the work.

This week we made some progress with the brochure. We took head shots of the Youth Officers and they supplied us with the info we needed. We attended a meeting on Thursday and we showed the committee our work to date. We discussed how many pages will be needed in the brochure and exactly what information will be on what page. We decided that we wanted comments from the members of the different clubs to go with their photos. Rather than putting in lots of paragraphs of information we want lots of photos and speech bubbles with short comments. Bernie, Deirdre and Siobhan (Youth Officers) agreed to gather these comments for us at their clubs.

The Thursday group finished their leaflet. They are looking for a post box outside the Spar in Mulhuddart.

The photo club purchased a new cannon d60 slr camera and we had great fun with the children on Tuesday taking photos.

On Friday we attended an award night for a photo competition our photo group had entered. It was held in the council offices of Fingal County Council in Blanchardstown. The children had a great time and afterwards there was a disco back in the community centre for them. 

This week we were very busy gathering data for the brochure. On Tuesday we had arranged to interview 3 past members of the Mulhuddart Community Centre, Sara, Ricky and Rose. We took photos and recorded the interviews on video. The video footage will be used in a promo video for the anniversary project. Both Sara and Ricky attended different groups at the centre as children and now work as youth officers with Foróige.  We also attended different groups taking photos and video footage and interviewing some of the young people.

Shane suggested we use “In Design” to produce the brochure as with “pages” you cannot get the exact colours you may need and Foróige insist the exact colours for their logo are used. We worked on the brochure with Shane and came up with yet another design.

In the Thursday after schools club we helped the children to use photoshop to design posters and leaflets to advertise a fun day they are organizing for the BYCA awards. 

As it was mid term break in the schools some of the clubs were cancelled  which meant we were able to spend more time down in Blanchardstown. On Monday, Shane discussed with us which application we should use to produce the brochure. He suggested “pages”. He gave us a quick tutorial how to design a brochure using templates in “pages”. He also gave us a tutorial on using  slr cameras.

On Tuesday we had a group of 6th class students in Mulhuddart. The previous week they had made up storyboards about a film they wanted to do. The name of the film is “The Kidnap”. We instructed the children on how to use the video camera. Each child was given a job to do. We filmed in the centre, the playground and the car park. We then showed them how to bring the footage into imovies. Everyone enjoyed themselves and next week they will edit the movie.

Wednesday morning myself and Denise spent the morning working on the brochure. We came up with two different designs. We were restricted with the choice of colours as we had to use the Foróige colours.  In the afternoon we had our photography group. As it was the midterm only four children turned up for the group. The children took photographs of themselves using photobooth. They applied effects to the photos and then edited them using picnik. As there was only four of them we allowed them to print their photos. On Thursday we did the same thing with the after-school group.

We spent Friday down in Blanchardstown  with Shane. We discussed  the design of the brochure and different options we could use. We discussed the different videos to be done and Shane explained to us what he had in mind.  Denise and I then worked some more on the brochure and came up with another design.