Our class was part of the Many Voices for Darfur Project, which brought together young people from around the world to press for peace and the end of genocide for the Darfur region of the Sudan in Africa. This was an amazing project. We wrote persuasive paragraphs about how to help the people of Darfur and then some of our students recorded their pieces for a podcast.

Take a listen to our views on the Darfur crisis

Do you think young people should have a voice when it comes to advocating peace in the world?

The 2008 Megaconference Jr has started. We’ll be presenting the Youth Radio project live from Butler Elementary School at around 2:00 pst. We hope lots of our YR community can view us at the Megaconference Jr site. We’ll keep updating you on events. Please jump in with comments. We’ll keep blogging the event throughout the day.

Australian sixth-graders enjoyed the creation of new words so much that they began to invent their own to add to our Youth Radio list (see words from Germany and Massachusetts, USA, down below).

Here are their words and here are their voices:

Greenage: a green colour

Tracli : animals that climb or live in trees

Bool : boring, but cool

Delimbia: an unknown planet

Annoyzgonzola : someone who is annoying but you don’t know how to tell them

Hockle doodle doo: a really bad dancer

Cakeacola : cake with coke in it, or coke with cake in it

Hogglewoggle: a pig in a blanket

Abbracigiggles: someone on a bike who wears braces but instead of tyres they are pogo sticks

Chesstick: a person who loves chess

Mummarola: mum turning the TV off on your favourite part

We hope you enjoyed the words!

– Youth Radio

Hello Youth Radio Community,

This Thursday, February 21, Mr. Faires’s class at Butler Elementary will be taking the Youth Radio project to a worldwide audience! Somewhere around 2:00 pst, we will be using a videoconferencing camera to connect to the Megaconference Jr., an international interactive videoconference by and for students. Click here to read more about the event.

What would you like us to tell the world about the Youth Radio project? Please let us know. Better yet, visit the Megaconference site on Thursday and watch our presentation. We’ll have a couple of students monitoring the Youth Radio blog throughout the day and during the presentation, so if you have questions or ideas you want to share, be sure to post a comment.

Hi. Here’s the first podcast from Butler Elementary in California. We wanted to share our hopes for the new year.

Please join us and let us know what you would like see happen in 2008.

To listen to our introductions, click here. Or listen here

Our friends in Spain enjoyed the invented words from Massachusetts so much they decided to invent their own. Take a listen.

• Zuny – a printer that does not work
• Nert – an out in baseball when you do it with three foul balls
• Malawool – a law that has to do with wool
• Sapatum – when somebody is so excited about what they are doing and they start to go crazy and break things. My friend had a sapatum when we were playing our first soccer game in our team.
• Panoranoia – a panoranmic paranoia. In the classroom there was panoranoia.
• Emoke – see something that no one saw before
• Mowan – an extremely crazy person
• Mowanotang – a cross between a mowan (see above) and an orangutan. You are a mowan/mowanotang

How about you? What words can you invent?

Here at the Norris School in Massachusetts, we have been studying the origins of the English Language and as part of our study, we created some new words that we would like to see in the dictionary. This was done as part of a wiki and a podcast project.

Would you like to hear our words? Take a listen.

And here are our written words:

• Antibiblious — Against books.
• Bidana - a pink fruit with blue and magenta stripes.
• Blizzle - Lots of homework.
• Cloony: The act of being a kook. Not knowing anything.
• Cowcalama: Loving cows more than anything in the whole wide world.
• Fugiggling — The act of laughing for no reason.
• Healcar- A type of medicine.
• Herveing — To run really fast and trip and get hurt
• Ronnoco- [noun] People that dislike Barry Bonds.
• Slcunk: Something that smells.
• Skuzzbombs: The act of expressing anger in a humourous way without swearing.
• Snackdidle- A food that you can eat a lot of
• Tigwig — A poisonous blue beetle.
• Unartle- Someone who does not do art.
• Xly - A dish of pancakes, eggs, waffles, and lobster.
• Zwig- An orange ostrich, wearing a pink tutu and eating a frozen mash potato TV dinner.

Now that you have heard and read our words, what words might you invent? Share them here through the comment feature on this post.

– The Norris School Sixth Grade Class

Students from Robbinsville, New Jersey started the school year retelling memorable moments in their lives. After several lessons on writing craft, the students wrote personal narratives using imagery, dialogue, and thoughts/emotions. The students have worked hard writing and revising; let us know what you think!

To listen to our podcast, click below:

Group 1

Group 2

Thanks for listening. What is one important moment from your life? You can use the comment link here to leave feedback for the New Jersey students or to tell your own story.

The students from the American School in Madrid, Spain, have sent forth this greeting for everyone.

Listen to their greeting (with an international flavor)

What languages do you speak?

Our student reporters from Michigan, USA, prepared this insightful podcast about their home state, giving some history, points of interest and wonderful information.

Listen to the podcast

What makes your state or country special? Use the comment section down below to add your thoughts.