Keeping Sonoma Sustainable - Website Design

The nutrition unit final has begun, and I have decided to be part of the approximately 20 students developing a website, which we have decided to name "Keeping Sonoma Sustainable."  This website will contain detailed information about local farms (Sonoma County Farms), and the produce the are selling at the given season. This will allow consumers from across Sonoma County to easily find the type of produce they are in search of - whether conventional, organic or sustainable. As the project continues, I will blog about our progress.

As one of the three managers for this project, our first order of business was to determine the range of skills we had to work with. This was determined through a Google Form created by the CEO, our teacher Catlin Tucker. The questions involved each individual's assets they brought to the project, and where they could be best placed to help.

Next we gathered as a group and sorted everyone into committees, based off of their responses and how we knew them to work best. 

Meanwhile we gave them a research document to start assembling about all the farms in Sonoma County.

October 13th was the first day of actual website construction, and it began with the revealing of committees (chart above). The night before I developed tasks for the committees that would meet that day. When I had assigned the jobs I had given most people two jobs, since many would not need the course of the whole project to be completed. For example, the About & Homepage Descriptions could be something easily put together in the beginning, and them for the remained of the time those students could be broken off into different groups. So for the first day only certain groups that I deemed critical to work on in the beginning met. 

As everyone worked the other two managers and I walked around to make sure everything was under control. Since I had been the one to assign jobs for the most part, I met with people who were assigned larger jobs to ensure they felt comfortable. 

As a whole, the group had great progress for the day. The design team viewed examples from a webpage I had linked, and got a good idea for what they wanted to create. The two designers were working well together, and I really think their skills will compliment each others nicely. Also, they designed a great header icon, consisting of barrels that would be updated to hold each season's popular produce. 

The professional outreach group started writing their letters to different farms, and found the ones they thought best to interview first. They also decided that they were going to visit Saturday's farmer's market to meet with several at the same time. 

The maps group watched a tutorial on how to use the Google Maps creation feature and began plotting points on the map. They found a way to create different layers, so viewers could see organic farms, conventional farms, sustainable farms, or them all at once. I think this will be an excellent feature on the site. The leader mentioned they could use a few more people on staff, so I plan on adding another two people to their group next class.

The About/Homepage descriptions brainstormed ideas and began drafting. I am really pleased so far with their writing. I think this project will go pretty quickly which is great, since we can then get them started on their other projects.

Because people are involved in several groups, I created the Website Expansion Group for those who were not in one of the above groups, to meet just for one class. I want as much extras on this site as possible, to engage many viewers. The were essentially brainstorming extra things we could add. This was not the most productive group, I realized, as brainstorming is sometimes difficult. I do like a few of the ideas though.

The only difficulty I might have throughout this project is working well with the other students. Most people have been easy to work with, however, as in all group projects, multiple leaders can sometimes clash and I am just hoping that will not be a problem during this. 

Yet altogether I think things are going great thus far. I am really pleased with the choices in committees, and many are taking the initiative to go beyond the assigned tasks. This format seemed to work well, so I think we will continue with it, but may also institute another progress tracker.