Reflections



March 8, 2010 I am worried about the rate at which Youth Voices is activating my account. I signed up two weeks ago and only just heard from them on Friday. They sent me an email asking me for my user name again. I have not heard from them since. I need to have it activated soon so that I can demonstrate how the site works to my class. If they do not activate my account in time, I have a back up plan but I would not be happy about having to use it. If Youth Voices does not work out I will create a classroom wiki where they can create their own pages and post their information on there but I will not be satisfied with that as I want them to have that public blog forum to get their information out there. I will give them until next Monday, after that I will have to resort to plan B. March 13, 2010 I still have not heard from Youth Voices and my account has not been activated. I tried signing up again under a new user name and email to see if maybe there was something wrong with my registration but have not received anything further than this email reply: code DStinson,

Thank you for registering at Youth Voices. Your application for an account is currently pending approval. Once it has been granted, you may log in to @http://youthvoices.net/user using the following username and password:

username: DStinson password: july182008

Please send and email to communitymanager@youthvoices.net and let us know that you have registered.

Let us know where you teach or where you are a student, Name of School, City or Town, State, Country.

Also, if you are an adult, please provide us with your first and last name. That's how we identify adults from youths on the site. code

-- Youth Voices Steering Committee

I sent my email to the manager and explained that I had signed up for an account earlier and had not yet been approved. See below:

//Good evening,// //My name is Danielle Stinson. I teach grade 7/8 at Ethel Milliken School in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. I have registered for my second account for Youth Voices. I tried to register two weeks ago but have not heard back with approval so I thought maybe my emails have been lost and I was forgotten by accident. I really would like to use your forum with my class and need to register them very quickly for a project we are doing. Please approve my account so that I can learn how to post to your site and get my students started.// //Thank you,////Danielle Stinson

My class has begun work on this project and we have discussed some of the issues that I have been having with the forum. I am very frustrated right now with this process and will be looking for an alternate space for my kids to share their work.

March 16, 2010  I have decided to have my students share their work on a Wiki. Our other grade 7/8 class will be doing the Genocide Project as well and they will also contribute to the same wiki. The grade 5/6 class at Haultain has agreed to use our digital textbook and I will invite all the parents to see and contribute comments as well. This is not quite the public forum that I had in mind but I think that it will work out well. You live, you learn right!  //