We are so excited about this Thursday and the Finals of the Eracism Project!  Our presentation for k12 online will also be going online this week as well, so you can "look under the hood," so to speak! 

The 2009 global debate project for middle schoolers, the Eracism Project (a Flat ClassroomTM Project www.eracismproject.org) will hold the finals of Eracism on the private Eracism grid on ReactionGrid on Thursday, December 17 at 9:15 am EST – 10:15 EST.  

 Although the students and judges for this project will be in-world, the presentation will be streamed live with a backchannel as part of the K12 Online Conference 2009 to CCiTV Live – http://ccitv.cciu.org/ and ReactionGrid  http://livestream.com/snowcrash.

 Student finalists will be debating “Differences Make us Stronger” in the impromptu style debate moderated by Bernajean Porter (http://www.digitales.us) with the final vote on the winner taken from the judges and student participants in the project who will be in the virtual world.  This final debate is the culmination of an 8 week debate project that began with sixteen teams from 12 classrooms in 7 countries and is now down to two debate teams from Shorecrest Preparatory School in Florida and Westwood Schools in Georgia.

The organizers of the project recently shared a presentation as part of the K12Online Conference about how the project was founded, the methodologies and tools used to make the debates “feel” as synchronous as possible, even when in the asynchronous environment of VoiceThread.

Sponsors of this project include: Elluminate, VoiceThread, ReactionGrid, and Wikispaces.

Date: Thursday December 17, 9:15 am EST – 10:15 EST. (click the link for time/date conversion)

• New Middle School Debate Project, Eracism looking for Pilot Schools, Debate Coaches, Judges (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com)