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)


 
 
 . Eracism Debate 1 Announcements
The pilot program of the Eracism Debate project (http://www.eracismproject.org) is proud to announce the winners and competitors in Debate Brackets 1 and 2.

First round winners include:
Corpus Christi School (CA, USA), Shorecrest Preparatory School (FL, USA), Bawlf School (Alberta, Canada), Maintou Springs Middle School (Colorado, USA), St. Paul the Apostle School (CA, USA), Longfellow Middle School (WI, USA), Eastchester Middle School (NY, USA), and Westwood Schools (GA, USA).  These eight schools are now in the semifinal bracket of Debate Bracket 1 and two of these schools will compete in the finals in a virtual world the week of December 14 as part of the K12 Online Conference 2009.

This debate has presented the judges and teachers with an enormous challenge.  The judges expressed concerns because of difficulty determining the "winners" in these competitions because of the incredibly strong abilities of both teams.  In order to facilitate further competition, fun, and learning, Debate Bracket 2 is including all of the excellent schools who did not win the first competition but who deserve an additional opportunity to compete.  Debate Bracket 2 Winners will be faciliators and participants in the final debate to be held in the virtual world for Bracket 1.

Bracket 2 Competitors Include: Choithram International School (India), Berwick Lodge Primary School (Melbourne, Australia), Nespelem Middle School (WA, USA), Qatar Academy (Doha, Qatar), ISG Dammam (Saudi Arabia), and the International School of Beijing (Beijing, China).  One of these schools will win the Competition for Debate Bracket 2.

The second series of debates will commence on Sunday, November 15- Tuesday, November 24th so that all 16 teams in the project will be debating a second time and in almost all cases will debate the opposite side as done previously with the topic "Differences Make Us Stronger."

This is a pilot program and teachers and judges of the competition will be providing feedback to improve all processes used in this debate with plans to run a second project in March 2010 implementing improvements.  Please contact organizers through the Eracism Project Website.

All winners and brackets are on the Eracism wiki at http://eracism.flatclassroomproject.org/Debate+No.2
 
Project Forming 10/24/2009
 
Our wiki is live and we are moving ahead with forming the classes now.  See our new wiki at http://eracism.flatclassroomproject.org. 
 
 
Eracism was envisioned by a group of students at the 2009 Flat Classroom Conference and we are excited about piloting this project.  This is the first project completely designed by students and we're very excited about the potential for encouraging fact-based debate between schools around the world.

A world-class educator and former debate Coach, along with other organizers, are working with this project to make this happen.  View the student video and share your thoughts!