youngwritersproject.org

An update, with music to read by

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A few random items of interest over the last few days at Young Writers Project, Inc.

First, feast your eyes on this recent submission by a student on youngwritersproject.org. This was done through vuvox.com which is an amazing site that allows users to create collages and multi-media visual stories. Great fun. Student's name is Bridget Iverson; she's at Mount Mansfield Union High School. Since this column is a bit narrow, this is best seen by clicking on the box next to the "SHARE" in the bottom right to view it on full screen.

Some other news:

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Submitted by ggevalt on Thu, 03/19/2009 - 19:14

Why we do this ....

I never have liked Monday mornings that much. I'm not alone, I know. I guess by most Sundays I am realizing that there is another side of me than work and am starting to "chill out" as my kids say (though they might dispute that.) Monday mornings I'm usually foggy -- I've caught up on sleep -- and a bit stressed as I think about all the things I need to get done in the week ahead.

So, it's really really really nice when we get an email like this from a user of our main student site, youngwritersproject.org:

"Hi Mr. Gevalt!

"I don't know if this is going to be considered wierd and stalker-like, but I wanted to tell you something. My name is (name removed because she didn't know I was going publish this) and I'm sunshinedaisy on youngwritersproject.org.

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Submitted by ggevalt on Mon, 02/16/2009 - 14:12

Attention breaker

In August 2006, I left my job as managing editor of The Burlington Free Press to embark full-time on this crazy notion that someone from the outside world could engage a few kids to write.

The first thing I did (after, of course, the required one day off) was to start building a Web site. It took me two weeks. But it worked. And, starting with one member of youngwritersproject.org -- me -- we've now grown to 3,560 members -- mostly students -- and we've chunked about 1,000 students along the way who've graduated....

What I have discovered about this site that is most amazing is how much the students talk about the site being addictive and monstrously time consuming. Now I know they speak the truth because I look at my Google Stats from time to time and see -- Average daily visits; 450 to 800; average pages visited: 10+; average time of visit: 11 minutes. Now if you know anything about Web site metrics that's pretty darn good. And if you take out the 32 percent who bop onto the site and leave immediately (now that's attention deficit!) the actual average is much much higher (hasn't Google heard of mean?)

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Submitted by ggevalt on Thu, 02/12/2009 - 15:46

Amazing Post

Check out this link: http://youngwritersproject.org/node/24553 and listen to (and read) what a Vermont high school student created barely two hours after President Obama's inauguration speech. "Speech plus Usagi" in the podcasts section.

This is a remarkable use of technology but also shows remarkable insight and critical thinking. Imagine if we equipped all our schools with decent recording devices. (Imagine, too, if our schools had planned to have their students watch this bit of history instead of taking mid-terms. -- gg

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Submitted by ggevalt on Thu, 02/05/2009 - 00:02

The YWP blog