I went through some of the pieces in the collection. It is important to give a platform to the voices that are missing from the conversation usually.

Just a few similar initiatives that you might want to check out:

Storycorps - people can record their stories via an app

Project Voice - spoken word poetry

Living Library - sharing one's story

Freedom Writers - book and curriculum based on real-life stories

Follow this link to a screencast and directions for how to submit one link for your best annotations on Hypothes.is. Here's the Vimeo Screencast.

No representation of skill trees captures the concept completely, but what I hope is evident on this page is that any Badge, with its related Playlist, should be connected to other Badges and Playlists that come before (in this case, above) it, and it should be one of a few available choices (represented in this case by other Badges and Playlists on the same row), and that it leads to other Badges and Playlists (below it), and that what comes next has choices as well.

Thomas is writing about his essay on Youth Voices.

Thomas is writing about this essay on Youth Voices.

and ours, I suppose.

Although there is much more that is possible in connecting youth in the middle of their research process, our experience of having students post at many and early stages of their inquiry/research process is invaluable!

Plantains are high in starch and low in sugar, but they are just as good for you as bananas, plus they are healthier! I love them!

Plantains look like bananas, but they are more like potatoes. They are starchy, and like a potato, you would want to cook them first. I love cooking plantains!

So there's more to it than building things and surviving? A student who plays minecraft told me today that he thinks you actually do learn what you are simulating in the game. "Like when you build a garden, you learn how to farm," he told me. Hmmmm.

18 million downloads. This is a popular game. Parents, teachers, and students are using the game for educational purposes. This surprises me because I never though a game would help kids.

Ever need inspiration about youth? Check out their work on climate change on Youth Voices: http://youthvoices.net/search/node/climate

Join teachers and students from around the country to annotate Obama's last State of the Union address on Tuesday at 9PM. Join Jeremy Dean, as he leads an "annotatathon" -- one of many we hope to see during this electoral season, as part of the Letters to the Next President project, co-sponsored by the NWP and WQED. Keep your eye out for the link to the transcript of the speech then join us on hypothes.is to annotate it live -- or later this week. Have your students join us live or later in the week as well!

I see in the sentence is different ways that can cut your life short by doing different things.What makes this sentence important is that it states different thing that you can stop in order to live longer *This connects to me cause i could take this and adjust people lives by telling them what can you the fastest

It's hard to remember how much of New Orleans was devastated and for how long.

Perhaps New Orleans is a global symbol of what Naomi Klein has called Disaster Apartheid

"Bush doesn't care about Black people," made clear the neglect that we felt immediately, but it was only later the I became aware of the years of incompetence and broken systems that led to the storm surge doing so much damage. Immediately -- and for me to this day -- New Orleans was a symbol of carbon corporate power. Where is BP in this sentence in the Times?

While this is a decent amount of increase, it is still way too low. This school, along with many others, need a lot of help with their graduation rates.

The power of this concluding paragraph says it all! Wow. And it's not just cops who show this disrespect.

This parallel list, with the devastating quotations interspersed is powerful indeed!

I wonder how many cops even seek to receive admiration and respect. I agree that fear and caution are a much less human level of respect, but how do we move from a culture where only the lower levels of safety are sought or given?

What this means is that there is a gap between what people feel on their gut level (or whatever you want to call it and what they are willing to act upon on an intellectual and political level. Intuitions can be true, but isn't it important to help people move from the intuitive levels of understanding to more committed levels that will lead to more sustained political action and change?

Seems to me like we need to value the lives lost mysteriously in back alleys too, no?

These roadblocks are usually imposed by home problems, that pertain with parents. There should be no way that parents hurt their kids at a good future, and the 2 parties should be separated.

The value of a high school diploma is increasing at a faster rate than ever. When students are left degree-less and have no options to get to college without a GED, many are hurt and can seriously effect your paycheck in the future.

What's new might really have a history.

One could also describe this as "contested." "Remains uncertain" already feels like the authors are moving toward an inevitable certainty of using nuclear power. Or am I being paranoid?

Coalition of enemies!

It's odd to think how little territory is actually controlled by ISIS, at least in the area of Tikrit.

Okay, so it's paragraphs like this that make me want to throw up my hands. Check out what is being said here. First, who is Sadr? "Sadr is one of the most influential religious and political figures in the country," according to Wikipedia. And he is sitting this one out. Why? Because forces who are supposed to his allies, the Shiite militias. Sadr is also a Shiite, I think. But after defeating ISIS, they kill the people who live there? I think I remember something like this being reported on Democracy Now. So yeah, what kind of unity is this? Sounds like mad confusion! Here's a Human Rights Report.

So what's the truth? Do Shiites slaughter Sunnis when they get a chance to or not? This article leaves me more confused than when I started.

And the Sunnis are connected to Qaeda?

Oh, so the Peace Brigades aren't the official troops, but they vastly outnumber the government's soldiers, and without them, nothing happens. I get it.

So Mr. Sadr's Peace Brigrades aren't the official government troops of Iraq? Makes you want to give up on ever understanding this stuff.

That's some name for militias of soldiers!

So this is implying that the Sunnis and the Shiites, from the above paragraph are working together with the Islamic government. Is that the case or is this a small exception tot the rule of not working togeter?

700 in a force of 30,000? Seems like this could only be symbolic.

This makes it sound like some sort of game.

If you have to call for unity, it's implied that you don't have it currently. Also later in this same paragraph. It feels chaotic and splintered to refer to fighters as a "faction" -- faction of what? I assume a faction of the Iraqi government forces.

gunmen have been taking people from their house and kidnapping them , some of them never return home some of them return but dead .

ISIS have put a lot of car bombs an trap to the Islamic state , to kill and eliminate people in from he Islamic state , the recorded them and puts the up in the internet so the whole world can see what they are doing .

the group Isis has been taking a lot of cities in Iraq , but at the same time the Syrian state have been bombarding their owns cities killing civilians in every part of the country .

some of the militant fighters are taking over cities over this year ,and when something happen the police work is the minimal over the cities, They castigated and murdered mes if they see them taking a shower in the rivers because women can see them

Things in the Islamic state aren't going really well , they don't even have electricity or even have good water , food is to expensive and the taxes are going way up .

What I can't wait to find out is what drew you to this topic.

I'd love to know why you enjoyed a sad story.

esta parte es importante porque la buela quería sabe lo que estaba siendo isaac pero no escuchaba na.

esta parte es importante porque el padre isaac se puso tan feliz que sero los ojo y se murio y le dijo a isaac que siguiera su camino que él es joven.

esta parte es importante porque isaac el control a su padre y también porque isaac quería sabe la la verdad.

esta parte es importante porque isaac jayo cartas y foto que sus padres le escribieron y esto se eso cambió su vida y estaba enojado con su abuela.

esta parte es importante porque juan tenía que sali todos los días para ganar dinero y también para compra comida.

esta parte es importante por que juan ternia

esta parte es importante porque ellos no esperaban una hija. Cuando nació Valentina era una sorpresa para ellos pero la recibieron con mucho amor. Estaban felix.

This makes me wonder how complicated this story is, with biases and struggle all over the place.

Nice start!

Titles are so important.

I like how the final four lines, all of which start with "and," make connections between the reader and you, showing how we know about each other and motivate each other.

One of the problems is that teachers burn out after their first few years of hard and endless works.

I think we all feel this way at times. I wonder why it overwhelms us sometimes, makes us angry at other times, and we just brush it off still other times.