{"id":1582,"date":"2014-07-07T15:32:04","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T22:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/?p=1582"},"modified":"2014-07-09T13:37:50","modified_gmt":"2014-07-09T20:37:50","slug":"youth-voices-the-online-course-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/archives\/1582","title":{"rendered":"Youth Voices – The online course edition?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dispatch_logo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

*** UPDATE: IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN THIS, TELL US HERE<\/strong><\/a>. ***<\/p>\n

A group of folks have been talking about the possibility <\/a>of putting together some online courses (MOOCs?) for students on Youth Voices <\/a>to participate in together.<\/p>\n

(For those unfamiliar, Youth Voices <\/a>is an amazing site where youth can explore their interests. Here youth of all ages are invited to voice their thoughts about their passions, to explain things they understand well, to wonder about things they have just begun to understand, and to share discussion posts with other young people using as many different genres and media as they can imagine!)<\/p>\n

The primary format of Youth Voices is blog posts. For those who are looking to create or use more structured “assignments,” there are also a set of missions<\/a>, which outline project ideas. Teachers and students can post their own missions, and most most missions take a relatively short period of time to complete.<\/p>\n

Last year, Paul Allison constructed a large collection Common Core aligned units<\/a> that could be structured into a whole year long curriculum in English Language Arts, History Social Studies, Arts and Media or Science.<\/p>\n

Sometimes on Youth Voices, groups from different classrooms around the world collaborate on topics of common interest, leading to some pretty amazing conversations. This led us to wonder if it might make sense to set up some medium length (4-6 weeks?) online courses that classrooms or individual students could sign up for. These might include choices of shorter missions to complete or students or teachers might choose their own activities around the common theme.<\/p>\n

The main point though would be to give students in different locations a ready way to collaborate with others.<\/p>\n

\"William_Shakespeare\"<\/a>One idea is to try a spring course like this for AP English students. The common theme could be an author like Shakespeare or a genre like dystopian literature. Students (and teachers) would have options for what specific texts they might read or what projects they might do, but they would all be writing on Youth Voices and commenting on each other’s work over a common period of time.<\/p>\n

In thinking this through, many questions come to mind:<\/p>\n