May 6, 2021

Dearest Colleagues,
 
We realize that times are very challenging right now with the global pandemic, and we hope that you and your families are staying safe at this time. Due the pandemic and safety issues, last year’s Congreso had to be postponed, and out of concern for safety, we have had to discontinue our mini-grant program that is designed to fund classroom workshops for Maya communities.

Given the ongoing difficulty of meeting in person during the pandemic, we wanted to explore new possibilities that would allow our min-grant recipients to continue their work to teach the Maya script to their students.

After some consideration and discussion, we wanted to reach out to hear from you to see how you are all doing, and to see if there is any interest in proposing either (A) virtual online workshops to teach about the Maya script, or alternately, (B) putting together instructional and educational videos for your students that can be uploaded privately to YouTube, or posted on our MAM website.

Please take a moment to complete this short MAM survey in English.

We would like to see what your needs may be regarding online access, teaching experience, and training, and we are proposing to make our MAM website at discovermam.org a repository for both public and private online educational videos made by Maya teachers for their students.

There is a great need for educational videos about Maya writing and the calendar in Spanish, as well as in different Mayan languages, and we would like to support the creation of more content like this.

We want to hear from you! We would like to know the situation with you and your students and whether your students have access to the internet to be able to attend a virtual workshop, or whether they will be able to view online educational videos. Using online platforms like Zoom can allow you to connect to your students in a virtual classroom. Likewise, Zoom can be used to record educational videos on your computer that can reach many students who may not be able to connect to an online workshop.

Please include your information if you would like us to contact you regarding future MAM mini-grants for teaching online workshops.

We look forward to hearing from you, and we hope we can find ways to keep us connected, while also keeping us all safe.

 Sincerely,

Michael Grofe, President
MAM
discovermam.org
discovermam@gmail.com

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* 1. Do you have regular access to the internet?

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* 2. Do your students and community members have access to the internet?

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* 3. Have you ever taught an online course? If so, what application or program did you use?

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* 4. Have you ever taught or participated in an online synchronous class where multiple people meet at the same time, as in Zoom?

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* 5. Ar you interested in conducting MAM-sponsored online workshops on Maya writing and calendar for your community? If so, what materials and programs would you need?

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* 6. Would you be willing to produce an online course that many people would see, for example on YouTube?

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* 7. Would you need training to learn how to teach online workshops or to record and upload educational videos?

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* 8. We know that this pandemic has been very challenging for so many of us. We would like to hear from you, and to hear how your community is doing at this time. If you are interested in writing a report about your community that could be posted on our blog, please let us know.

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* 9. If you have any additional comments or questions, please let us know here. You can also contact us at: discovermam@gmail.com

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* 10. Please include your information if you would like us to contact you regarding future MAM mini-scholarships for teaching online workshops.

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