Kids Cafe

For awhile I've been wanting to create an Educamp inspired forum for kids to share, inspire and teach each other. I looked into doing it face to face with another school, via Skype Education or GHO (Google Hangout). However; all three of those options would limit the number of children that could actively participate. What I really wanted to achieve was to find a way where as many classes as interested, could participate and from anywhere in the world. I wanted to break down the barriers of location and time difference. This week I came up with the idea of Kids Cafe. 

Kids Cafe is based on the concept of Educamp, with a few differences. It’s an opportunity for kids to teach other kids about a passion, interest or talent. This could be anything from a maths strategy to Te Reo, how to care for turtles, how to use iMovie, how to kick a rugby ball over the goal post or how Daily 5 is used in your classroom. The aim is to create a mini tutorial to teach other kids about your passion, interest or talent. How you do this is up to you. You could create a YouTube clip, use Puppet Pals, digital storytelling, Educreations, create an ebook etc. The only catch is that it must be able to be accessed online. This is also a next step for my Adventure Learning programme, which is based on Google's 20% Time.

Kids Cafe runs on a four week cycle. Here is an outline:

Week 1 - At the start of the week sign your class up. Then add to the Google Doc, by recording what you could teach someone else or what you’d like to learn more about. You can do this by completing the kids registration form at the bottom of this doc. The Kids Cafe topics will also be announced on the Kids Cafe blog and via @KidsCafeNZ on Twitter.

Week 2 and Week 3 - These two weeks are set aside for presenters to create their tutorial, as well as for classes to plan how they are going to organise how they will run Kids Cafe in their own class. By Friday at 3pm all tutorials will be linked to the Kids Cafe Thinglink. Instructions on how to link your tutorial will be able to be found on the Kids Cafe blog -

Week 4 - Run your own Kids Cafe in your classroom sometime during the week. Click here for an example of how you could do this in your class. On the Friday join in the @KidsCafeNZ Twitter chat to reflect on your learning, share photos of Kids Cafe in your class and to provide the presenters with feedback, as well as to discuss topic ideas for the next Kids Cafe.

To register your class for Kids Cafe visit the doc. Scroll right down to the bottom. Remember any class, anywhere in the world can join in. http://goo.gl/R3dLL1

To visit the Kids Cafe blog click here http://kidscafenz.blogspot.co.nz/


This is only a seed I've started to plant so am open to ideas and further suggestions for improvement.