[conf] Bringing Youth Voices to Breakthrough Learning Forum
Next week, Global Kids will be leading a team of youth leaders to a landmark event in the world of digital learning. The event, titled Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age, is being organized by the Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, Common Sense Media and Google and will be held at the GooglePlex on October 27th and 28th. It's aimed at bringing attention to new forms of learning facilitated by technology, and will be attended by policymakers, industry leaders, education practitioners and researchers, and, of course, by digital youth. The youth team will consist of kids from Global Kids, the Bay Area Video Coalition and MOUSE, and will aim to bring in a youth voice to the forum in a variety of ways. We're really excited that the organizers put a priority on making sure actual teens were a part of this important conversation, as so often they aren't.
Leading up to the event, our Online Program's Director, Barry Joseph, has contributed to the Breakthrough Learning Blog with a post about using alternative assessment models to empower youth directed learning. We're excited about the post here at GK, as it's one of the first times we've articulated some of our recent efforts using digital transcripts, digital portfolios, and distributed learning maps as methods of alternative assessment that help youth to think critically about their learning across multiple spaces. Definitely check it out and comment!
We're also excited to release at the event our report, Meeting of Minds: Cross-Generational Dialogue on the Ethics of Digital Life, which highlights findings from the Focus Dialogues, held last Fall, which brought together parents, teachers and teens to talk about ethics online. We look forward to releasing the report more widely in the coming weeks.
For those that won't be at the event, you can watch the webcast on both the opening and main day and submit questions via Google Moderator.
