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Voices of Youth
A
Telecollaborative
Lesson Plan
Implementation
Potential Issues
Contingency Plans
As with any task involving the use of technology, there may be some potential issues that arise. Listed below are the potential issues that I anticipate occurring:
1. My initial concern would be with ensuring that my students understand how to respond in a responsible and respectful way when they engage in the discussion portion of the activity and when they comment on other individuals' work.
2. My next concern involves the publishing of students' work to the Voices of Youth website. The site has an editorial staff, which reviews all submissions and selects those that will be published on the site. Because they receive such a large number of submissions, not all of the submissions are published, so I have concerns that some or all of my students' work would not be published to the site.
3. My last concern involves the possibility that the site would be down or that we would have some other difficulty with the technology.
To help prevent or address the issues mentioned above, I have established the following plans:
1. Prior to having the students comment on the site or participate in discussions on the site, we will look at the types of comments and responses that are currently listed to discuss what is and is not appropriate to say. We will also spend some time looking at the goals of the site and how they mesh with our class goals. Students will be reminded that they should be responding and commenting in ways that will demonstrate their ability to meet the class objectives. In addition to this, once students do begin participating, they will be required to keep and submit a log or journal of the ways that they have contributed to Voices of Youth. This way, I will be able to go back and review what students are posting. Once students begin creating their own work to submit to Voices of Youth, I will review each submission for the appropriateness of the content, as well as grammar and mechanics.
2. Voices of Youth encourages participation by educators, and they offer opportunities to partner with other youth-oriented organizations. As a result, it may be helpful to contact the organization ahead of time about generating a partnership, which could help make it possible for my students' work to be published. In the event that we are unable to do that, I would consider creating my own type of website where we could post my students' work. I would also be open to including work from other students throughout my school, our school district, and even the state. We could develop a local "Voices of Youth."
3. The nice thing about this project is that there are a variety of things that students can do. In the event that the website is down or that we are having some type of technical difficulties, students can always work on developing their own post to submit to Voices of Youth. These can be done without the use of a computer, if needed.
Evaluation Procedures
At the conclusion of this activity, the students and I will participate in the following evaluative measures:
1. I will complete a quantitative assessment that looks at the following:
~ the number of posts my students had published and the number of comments they received
~ the number of times my students participated in a discussion
~ the number of times my students commented on another's work
This data will help me to determine how much interaction is actually occurring between my students and other contributors to Voices of Youth.
2. I will ask my students to complete a written reflection that addresses the following topics:
~ what they liked best about participating in the activity
~ what they liked least about participating in the activity
~ what they learned about diverse cultures and experiences by participating in the activity
~ how they can use their knowledge to help them in their own classrooms
~ how they could use this site in a lesson of their own
~ what they would do differently to improve the experience
After the above items are completed, I will review the data and the students' responses to determine whether or not to pursue this project again, and if so, what changes need to be made to improve the project.
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