The Link #24 - New Directions for Wholeschool

We are ceasing production of CDs as the source of the course. Wholeschool.org will provide an Internet-based program, called The YETI Club, for after-school groups. The purpose for The YETI Club (Youth Education To Inspire) is to bring elementary-age children together via real-time web conferencing, first throughout the United States and later throughout the world, to explore what it is to be a human being in an exciting and non-judgmental way.
We are actively moving to source the course from the Internet using a real-time, multiple participant conferencing method. By September of this year we will be able to provide a live webcast of the course three days a week for an hour each day. The webcast will use WebEx as the hosting service, which allows audio, video, file sharing, browser sharing and also allows break-up into conferencing subgroups.
We will focus on schools with after-school programs and enrol as many in the Spokane area as possible, then move throughout Washington, then the Northwest and West and proceed eastward.
The fee structure has not been finalized but it will be in the neighbourhood of $150 per month per school for the webcasting plus $15 per month per student participating. This will allow us to become self-sustaining with about 40 schools, each having 20 children participating.
We will have about 15 minutes of conferencing describing the course work for the day by a Wholeschool presenter, 40 minutes of off-line course work with children working with their local moderator and then 15 minutes back on-line to discuss results and answer questions. The course will be similar to the CDs only it will be downloaded from the Internet. Most schools now have high speed Internet connection. Each participant will also receive materials for activities away from the computer (similar to now) and also have a webpage on our site to display pictures, creative works or just ramblings.
Individuals will be able to enrol for $15 a month. We will archive each day’s lesson and these “Silent Partners” will download and play the material and complete the lesson. They will receive all materials and a webpage similar to the conferencing participants. The archived lesson will also serve conferencing students who miss a day or for those who just want to replay all or a portion of the day’s material.
Once we have 15 or so schools, we will expand the time to allow them to break into conferencing groups of three or four schools. They will discuss a topic together and come to a short summary of their efforts.
When we move eastward to other time zones, these summaries will be offered to the next westward group to add to so that the same topic travels across the country, one hour after the next.
When we expand globally, we will continue this process so that topics travel around the globe, arriving the next day for all to review before starting another topic. We call this the “Global Wave”.

We are committed to raising a generation of young people who realistically observe and accept themselves and accept humanity as a whole. Acceptance leads to responsibility, not as in credit or blame, but as recognition that we humans are the source for the way the world is. Recognizing that we are the source of the world empowers and opens new possibilities for our future