EduCon 2024

We will focus a conversation on the technologies that we are using in our classrooms to raise student voices and to connect students across schools. We are all teachers involved in the Youth Voices Inquiry Project, a cross-generational project focused on using reading, writing, and digital media in support of learners' own passions and interests. Starting as a summer pilot program in 2013, the project has expanded into a full-year inquiry, engaging youth and teachers as co-learners with the ultimate goal of supporting a peer-supported and making/writing-centered orientation in their classrooms. Connected to the larger YouthVoices.net community and funded in part by the New York Community Trust/New York City HIVE Learning Network, this project serves as a laboratory for the exploration of the relationship between interest-based and disciplinary learning with social media at the center. This session will show rich examples of how the principles and practices of Connected Learning are enacted, and will support participants in thinking about this work in their own communities and contexts. Specifically we want to show how important it is to keep both technology and pedagogy at the center of our work with students.