Back in September of 2023, at the Parents Information meeting, just before the start of the Cub Scouting year, our Akela shared he was working on a new initiative of starting a web-based Cub Reporter program. My son was at this meeting and this was definitely of interest to him. It was posed as a way for the Howlers to step up and highlight meetings for parents to know what the pack was up to and to share how fun the Cubs program is to anyone looking to see what it is all about.
The process has been pretty simple and a lot of fun!
- At the meeting, Ben takes photos of different things they are doing – while being sure to keep people out of the photos. Privacy is of utmost importance to the pack members.
- After the meeting, he brain dumps – puts everything he can think of onto paper. I ask prompting questions like:
Were you working towards any badges?
What Scouters were there and what were they doing?
What did you learn?
Etc….
- The next day, he opens a new Google Document under a shared drive between us and his Scouter. This is when our Cub puts his notes into sentences and paragraphs and tells a story of what happened at the meeting the night before in his perspective.
- While he is doing this, I review and edit/crop his photos from the night before and upload them to the shared drive.
- Once he is done typing, I put the photos into the document where he wants them. Ben then reviews the format and is ready for some help editing.
- I complete a spell & grammar check…I also add in words or sentences to make it flow although I try to keep his thoughts and personality intact. At this stage we look at the format – sometimes this is increasing or decreasing font size or adding any other font formatting needed.
- Ben then reads over the document and gives the final ok
At this point, we send an email to the Scouter so he can take a look and complete any updates or formatting he needs to publish the article.
This has been a great learning project and has given our son a feeling of pride knowing he is responsible to properly capture what the meeting was all about and share with everyone what he enjoyed most!
Photo’s and Story by: Denise Zammit
