Meanwhile, Teenvoice has grown exponentially. It represents more than 5,000 hours of development by nearly 100 teens. As the product evolves, we realize that the teen staff is creating turn-key sites that can resonate for teens anywhere in the country and provide newspapers with tools and solutions to connect to their schools and young readers. The core Teenvoice staff manages nearly a dozen specific worlds, from auto to fashion, from colleges to entertainment. Soon, we will launch a Teen Health Net, which is a partnership among The Record, the academy and the county health department.
Love is in the air.
A score of other high schools have formally aligned with the project and are contributing content directly to the site. More districts are joining weekly. The original youth advisory board now concentrates its work on the Web and works from their homes and classrooms across the region. The Teenvoice staff has developed dozens of templates and self-publishing tools that let teens who know little if anything about webbing and HTML publish directly to the site. While the curriculum teaches the teens, the teens frankly are contributing more, especially to our professional understanding of the new media world.