I’ve recently had the pleasure of corresponding with teacher, entrepreneur and blogger, Vicki A. Davis (aka: Cool Cat Teacher) from the U.S. Vicki is co-author of the Flat Classroom Project, Digiteen Project and Horizon Project. Needless to say she’s been very pro-active in exploring future possibilities in education.
I asked her if she could point me toward any exciting projects she knows of where teachers are using technology in education. She suggested I checkout the Flat Classroom Project.
The Project uses Web 2.0 tools to make communication and interaction between students and teachers from all participating classrooms easier. The topics studied and discussed are real-world scenarios based on ‘The World is Flat‘ by Thomas Friedman.
One of the main goals of the project is to ‘flatten’ or lower the classroom walls so that instead of each class working isolated and alone, 2 or more classes are joined virtually to become one large classroom. This will be done through the Internet using Web 2.0 tools such as Wikispaces and Ning.
Now this is what I call moving beyond the PowerPoint presentation! Fully USING free technologies readily available to collaborate.
Australia has a participating school in the project; Presbyterian Ladies College in Melbourne.
The project won 1st Place in the Best Wiki 2006 category of the 2006 Edublog Awards.
You can download a copy of the Project outline here.
Is your school involved in anything like this? We’d love to hear about it.
Written by Brad Halcrow.
Brisbane Beyond Chalk Facilitator
2:30 am
Just to let you know that some of my students at Hawkesdale P12 College were also involved in the project this year. Two of our girls won their sections and one of them got an honourable mention for their video in the global project. Three of these girls will accompany me to Qatar next week to be involved in the flatclassroom conference.
Another teacher from Wedderburn, Anne Baird will also be attending. So, our government schools are also getting involved.