Welcome to our blog!
This is a blog created by a group of students from the LFS 350 course that is working with the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society – Fresh Choice Kitchens for a research project throughout the term. The main purpose of this blog is to share with others about our progress on the research project, as well as to share thoughts and other exciting news on related topics. Our project, ” The Science of Canning”, mainly focuses on helping Fresh Choice Kitchens to revise their current manual given to their canning instructors and add in scientific concepts to clearly illustrate the science behind safe canning practices.
Our group members include Amy Huang, Bonnie Chan, Drew Bondar, Jasmine Lee, Joyce Liao, Nathan Lee and Sophie Dong. (Check out our personal introductions on the “Team members” page!) During our first meeting, we shared our reasons for choosing this project: some of us would like to apply our knowledge from food processing courses to real-life settings, while others may be entirely new to canning and are eager to learn more about it through this project. During our first meeting, apart from familiarizing with each other, we also set some ground rules, which we think are four important points we should always keep in mind when working as a group:
1) All members should take responsibility for the project
– contribute equally and proactively!
– keep up with the progress and finish designated parts before deadlines
– check Google Doc and/or Connect group discussion board regularly for group
discussions and project updates
2) Meet up at least once a week for discussions and to update individual progress
– let the others know beforehand if you cannot attend a meeting and check for updates on the project on Google Doc and/or Connect group discussion board
3) Don’t hesitate to speak up!
– feel free to let other members know if you need help
– don’t be afraid to express your own opinions
4) Respect others!
We also discussed on our strengths and preferences when working in a group and we identified the different roles within members. We have Drew as the communicator for contacting the community partner and Bonnie as the blog administrator for the overall maintenance of this blog. We also decided that all group members will take turns writing weekly blogs so that we can all have experience in expressing our thoughts and communicating with the community through the internet.
After our first meeting, Drew has contacted our community partner through email and he has scheduled a time in the following week to meet up with them and further discuss the project objectives. Drew and Jasmine will be representing our group to visit our community partner. However, before their visit, we will all meet up to discuss on possible questions that we would like to ask our community partner, as well as to start brainstorming for the project proposal and divide up the work. After the visit, Drew and Jasmine will update us about their discussion with the community partner so that we can incorporate that into our ideas for the proposal. Everyone will work on their designated parts of the proposal and we aim that we can formulate a draft for the proposal by week 3.
Thank you for reading our first blog entry! We will update soon on our progress in week 2!