Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Authentic Audience: YouTube Gives Your Students a Global Voice

One of Phillip Schlechty's design qualities in his book Working on the Work is giving students an Authentic Audience. An example of this is a Chorus teacher in New York City started broadcasting his students singing popular songs on YouTube. The videos showed students passionately engaged in their work and the videos went viral. So viral that one of the songs Landslide caught the attention of the author Stevie Nicks. Stevie was so touched by their work that she invited them to Madison Square Garden to preform for her. After they were done Ms. Nicks hugged every student.

Reach out and take a chance give students to opportunity outside the school walls and see that an imagination can take you places you never dreamed you could go.

They were also nominated for a MTV music award, not bad for a bunch of 5th graders.

Link to PS Chorus blog to see more of there great performances.
http://ps22chorus.blogspot.com/


Video # 1: Landslide by PS22


Video # 2: Students preforming at Madison Square Garden for Stevie Nicks