New Unit, New Approach

It's an idea I've been toying with a while now - students creating their own unit from start to finish. I had a friend who had tried this to a certain extent but I wondered if I could push it further. This lead to the idea of students creating online courses, which their peers or other people could take. Would this be possible? Even more so, would this be possible with a 6-week unit? 

Online learning is becoming more and more popular in the 21st-century world of learning. One of the biggest draws is it's convenience - you do do it any place, any time providing you have an internet connection. But does it have any place in the elementary classroom? 

I was curious to know if I could really give my 9-year-old students the responsibility of creating a unit from start to finish as well as creating it as online content. I started to draft a flow chart of what I would need to do and came up with the following. 

When I introduced the concept to my students, the response I got was "Are we really going to be able to do all that?" followed up excitement that they were going to actually build a course. I think what really got them hooked as well is that I told them no other class was going to be doing in the school and we were going to be trialling this idea out. There was a sense of pride that they had been 'chosen' for such a task.

Honestly, I had no idea how I really going to do this when I first started brainstorming and still have no idea if it will really end up working like I hope it will but I've jumped in and so have my kids. I'll be documenting the whole process as I go and I'm sure my plans will be changing frequently in order to cater to my students. It's going to be a wild next 5 weeks.