whenyouneedmorethanwater

So it has been a while since I wrote in the blog and since that time, a couple of things have happened. Firstly we recently put together the new version of our report with a completely new background as well as analysis. These two are now more cohesive and more focused upon the question our report is based upon. The new background is now focusing more on youths and not the issues in society themselves, where we build up arguments that support our conclusions drawn in the analysis. However, the analysis is still in progress, and we are working with linking the two better so one can really see how our conclusions are based upon the background. Furthermore, there are still some parts missing in our paper, parts we haven’t written like the source criticism, as well as parts that need to be added to e.g. the background. I am still a bit worried that parts of our analysis may be off track since we sometimes do bring in information that is not considered to be common knowledge. I also feel that I times we do not connect to the background as good as we should be able to, and this I feel may be because we maybe lack some parts in the background still. However I do think my worries can also be developing do to the fact that we are rewriting the report every minute in a new way which sometimes makes you forget what you were supposed to write about or focus on.. Well.. Another worry is whether or not we will have time to make the comic strips that we had planned to create from the start. I think they will really be time consuming but it all depends upon what feedback we will receive from our handledare, haha, this Thursday, and whether we will finish the remaining parts quickly. I do think we are on the right track now but it still feels a bit like we are walking around in circles not quite going where we should be.. Oh well, we’ll see how it goes. I do think I am the pessimistic one in our group compared to Helena xD

So we really are doing the final touches on the project, going through language formulation, coherency etc. It is time consuming but not particularly difficult so it’s nothing to fuzz about. However, we do have some parts that we actually have to finish i.e. in terms of doing some more pieces of writing. The conclusion and the sourcing are still remaining but we know what to say so just have to put it down on paper. The only worries I have at the moment is that the part where we’ll create comics will be more complicated than we think it will (which most likely will be the case). We need to finish the written product soon so that we can begin to focus on the more creative part of this project. There are still a few weeks to go, but it feels like we’re definitely getting there.

Today Katta and I will try to meet and continue to work on the project where we left it yesterday. The new format we’ve created works out great as we’ve know had the opportunity to go through it with the Sensei. We have to add some parts to our background, but we’ve got the sources for it, so it shouldn’t be a major thing. Some of the analysis we wrote with the old background as support is still applicable so we don’t have to write too much when it comes down to it. What does concern me is that we have not even begun thinking about the comics, but I suppose we’ll just have to focus on finishing the report part first…

So, apparently we’ve only got 10 more weeks to go and well, we still have plenty of work to do. The major issue at the moment seems to be a lack of structure of the things we’ve put together as a final project document. We need to polish that a tad but still it shouldn't be a problem. Our major…major issue, is that we have drifted away from the initial idea with the whole project. The bright side is that we are aware of this and have developed a new structure! Which is fantastic. Yesterday we went to Statsbiblioteket, again, and borrowed some books that will support our arguments (that actually are done to some extent) so I’m not too worried. That is to say as long as we deal with it NOW. As for the comic strips, I’ve almost forgotten all about them so we’ll see how that goes; but it feels like as long as the analyses are done, it should be alright. Though I do believe we are going to need a few weeks to work on them. Personally, I feel like we have reignited the ambition we started out with, and with our new clear structure it shouldn’t be too much of a problem time-wise. But as mentioned, we still cannot afford to lose any weeks.

So I have forgotten to update the blogg from my perspective, but for a few weeks during the project period and over Christmas, we still waited for the results from the survey. Speaking of which, some complications arouse concerning the survey: we did not receive the number of replies we wished for, only a total of 13. It felt somewhat disturbing, but since we’ve mailed dozens of schools, we felt like we had to move on and process the material we actually had received. If we had continued waiting we had probably had a real tight schedule by now, because we have to think of not only good analysis but the comic strips as well. Anyways, at the moment we have begun process the material more thoroughly and analysing the results. The analyses have proven to be more complicated and time consuming than we believed. This is most likely due to some confusion about the format on the academic report. To our analysis’s, we have to naturally defend them be showing facts supporting what we’re stating. Now, the problem is not to find facts, but rather which way to present them in the essay. Firstly, we have to go through our material because I am sure that we are exceeding the word limit that has been given to us. Secondly, we have to argue and present background facts to all of the alternatives in the survey (which we did not think of at all to start with), and where to put this. Additionally, we don’t know how to begin the background, what should be factual material and how much should be a type of introduction to our ideas? There is defiantly plenty going on, and things to do before the draft due Friday. We do have a good basis with the material and hundreds of documents, but we have a lack of structure at the moment. I think we do have all the material we need to finish the project; the problem is that we have to make the documents and thoughts more concise. We’ll see how things are at the end of the week once we’ve turned in the draft.

So, since we acknowledged our misinterpretations of the instructions concerning what the different parts should include last week, we are finally on track with writing our report in the right way. Since we thought the background was supposed to include some form of motivation for our selection we had put all the facts and analysis in a mixture. This confusion was quite stressful since it made it allot harder writing the report and fitting part in where they should be. I wrote earlier that we had planned to have our analysis structured this way: first were the definitions of the facts, followed by the Swedish and the American analysis and ending with a comparison between the two with similarities and differences. This has now been changed since we realized, or at least we think this is the way it should be, that the background is the part that should consist of only the facts to back up our analysis which is a separate part of the report, the main body so to say. Since this we have changed the structure for our project to the following: Background is divided into facts from the 3 top issues that were selected in the Swedish and American survey, and the analysis consist of the Swedish analysis, the American, followed by the comparison. We have currently written the introduction and the purpose, as well as the material and methods. So, last weekend I was at the library borrowing books that we could use as sources for our Swedish analysis concerning the environmental issue, since this was voted number one. We decided that one of the argument to why the environment was placed number one among youths in Sweden could be that it is part of the culture to be environmentally friendly, it is a part of our everyday life. The environmental issues also gain a lot of attention in the media, and this for varies reasons. I found an article in a newspaper at the library from this year that talked about that Stockholm had been awarded the “European green capital award” and though that this could be a great argument for why the environmental issues gaind public attention, and also a argument to show that Sweden is working with this issue. The article was in form of an attachment (bilaga) from the newspaper Stockholm Stad, Dagens Nyheter. I consider it to be reliable since it is written by Sten Nordin in the Finance department. The article that I have mainly used is mostly factual and there isn’t really a way the author could biased it. There are other articles in the paper as well, one written by the General director for the environment in the EU commission, a person who we consider can be trusted. This article is mostly factual as well. So, to summarize it is quite stressful for us now since our goal is to have as much as possible written for the hand in next week. It isn’t fun being set back this much, time wise. But we have to remember that we were not only set back by our misinterpretation of the instructions for the project, but also the fact that we actually distributed a survey and had to wait for the responses. This makes it kind of comforting at a stressful time like this with the first sample hand in coming up soon. No worries, we will try to finish as much as possible before next week : )

Forgot to write in the blogg last week, but we are currently writing on our final product since we want to have as much as possible done for week 5. We have decided to begin with a brief description of each problem and this is what we are currently writing. After that we were thinking that we were going to have an analysis for the Swedish responses, than the responses from USA, and in the end a comparison between the two. Since we have only gotten back 13 responses from USA we are really insecure how we should proceed right now. That is also one of the reasons that we have made the format for the analysis that way since it enables us to start writing on the report now. We have gotten 50 responses from Sweden and the goal we set earlier was 25 from USA before this weekend so that is quite stressful.

So this week we have done an online survey that we have sent out both to schools in Sweden as well as the US. We have gotten back a few responses and are currently waiting for more. We had some trouble sorting the alternatives into main categories, but we are happy with how the survey turned out. Right now our main concern is whether or not we will get back as many responses as we need before next week, since this is the deadline that we have decided since we want to start writing our report next week. We have also written some of the introduction as well as the background so we are on track.

One project week has now gone by extremely swiftly and we haven’t really accomplished much. Our main concern is still to get in contact with schools who can distribute the survey to their students. Nevertheless, we have taken measurements to make the process smoother by creating an online survey, so that we only send out a web blink. Yet, people don’t seem to be too inclined to answer, which gets us in a somewhat sticky situation. The only thing we’ve been doing this week, and what we’ll continue doing, is to search for email addresses we can send the survey to. Otherwise there isn’t much we can do at the moment but to wait or write some parts of the final essay report.

Our new contact in the States turned out to extremely helpful with our focus groups, which are now done! We did not use Skype to talk to the American youths ourselves, instead the focus groups were made through email, but at least we got some responses. At the moment the plan is to send the survey tomorrow as an email, not using a free survey site, to schools in Sweden. It is still troublesome to get in touch with high schools, but as we’ll wait for the replies from Swedish schools, we can precede our chase for American schools. Next week is the starting point for the project weeks, hopefully we’ll have received some answers by then.

This Thursday the results from the focus groups in USA came by email from the contact Phil gave us. Our contact, Nevil, actually did the focus group sessions himself, and then sent us the results. This gave us some insight in what people in the US are thinking about concerns in the society, and it also gave us some more alternatives that we had not thought of. We have decided the exact format on the survey. It will consists of 10 main subjects e.g. environment and technology. These will all have 4 alternatives under them and the students have to choose one of these under each main subject. After doing this the student has to rank the subjects from the most to the least important. It was hard coming up with the main subject and put together the alternatives to it would all connect, but we finally did it! We are planning to send the survey later today.

Things have gone rather slowly which can be seen as we haven’t posted anything for quite some time. So the thing is that our loving contact in America has, though he agreed to help us, been replying in a pace that somewhat has decreased the speed of the whole project. Currently we are simply waiting on a response from him, but also from another new contact. There isn’t much we can do about the situation but to wait, and in the meantime work on processing the material we already obtain. We have sent requests to high schools in Sweden and we’ve got some positive replies already. This upcoming week we need to have heard from our contacts because we have to have sent out the survey before the project weeks. In conclusion, things aren’t at their brightest.

Yesterday we sent the emails to the schools in Sweden and asked them if it was possible for us to send our survey to them. We have already gotten 3 positive replays which we answered today and said that we are going to send them our survey as soon as possible. Right now our main concern is the fact that we still haven’t held the focus groups in USA, and this is preventing us from developing our survey. We soon have to decide if it is really necessary / possible for us to hold these focus groups or if we should skip them and just focus on developing our survey. Our aim was to have the responses from the surveys back before we have the project week, and for this to be possible, we really have to start sending it to schools soon.

Good afternoon Mr Kramer! We stongly believe it is time for an appointment regaring our project. If it is suitable for you, Katarina and I suggest that we meet next week on the scheduled project time, or any other time soon, if that is possible? Thank you for your consideration, Yours truely Helena the Great and Master Katarina

I totally forgot to write down what we did last week, but I thought it was better to write it down later than never. So last week I was finally able to take part in the focus group discussions and I think it was very educating and we actually got some interesting information from them. The day after, Thursday, we wrote the mails that we are going to send to schools in America as well as the ones in Sweden. We also got Ernest to correct the American email for us. At the moment right now we have received the email to Fredrik’s contact in the US, so tomorrow we will email him. We have decided that we are going to do the survey online through a website where you can make surveys since this will probably be the easiest way. Tomorrow we are going to develop the survey, ask other English-speaking teachers for contacts in the US, find schools in Sweden to send our email to and develop the focus group session that we will hold over the internet with people in USA.