NEWS Update
Vicki and Julie were very busy at ISTE last week with various presentations and sessions including a 7-hour DigiTeacher Workshop, Flat Classroom ‘Birds of a Feather’ and the ‘Seven Steps to Flatten your Classroom’ presentation that was attended by over 200.

Flat Classroom Workshop, St. Louis
St.Louis. July 13-14, 2010
http://flatclassroomworkshop2010.flatclassroomproject.org/

Special announcement! The Flat Classroom Project 10-3, running from September - December 2010 will be our 20th global collaborative project since joining classrooms together using Web 2.0 tools in 2006. We are delighted to announce David Warlick, one of our main sources for inspiration and a supporter of our projects and events, will be creating the keynote for this project. Consider joining your classroom today, applications close September 1, 2010.

Flat Classroom Conference 2011, Beijing, China February 25-27, 2011

The NEXT Flat Classroom Conference is in Beijing, February 25-27, 2011. Join us at the W.A.L.L. - We All Learn and Lead in China!

The Flat Classroom™ Conference is a unique limited-seating conference including students and educators to envision the future of education as they use leading technology tools such as wikis, blogs, social networking and multi-media storytelling. The conference is diverse in participation while allowing smaller groups with leading world-class presenters in a "flattened" environment where virtual participants join in the conversation from remote corners of the world.

Educators will leave the conference understanding how to collaborate globally and with contacts in hand to start projects. Students will leave the conference with leadership skills, technology skills, presentation skills, and a better understanding of diverse cultures and collaboration.

Educators come and join the Leadership Workshop! Teachers apply to bring students to the Student Summit and allow them to be challenged to find a voice while collaborating with others from around the world.
Early Bird registration until September 15! All details, including online Registration at http://www.flatclassroomconference.com/.

Are you interested in sponsoring a Flat Classroom Workshop or Flat Classroom Conference? A range of sponsorship opportunities are available to ICT and education vendors as well as other companies and individuals interested in supporting the event. See http://www.flatclassroomconference.com/sponsors.html.

Announcing New Projects

We are delighted to announce the re-opening of applications for the Digiteen Project 2010-2011. Each project is offered three-times per year and runs for 8-10 weeks. The Digiteen™ Project is a global hands-on project for middle and early high school students, (typically Grade 6-9, 11-15 year old). This project studies digital citizenship with students researching current topics, writing a collaborative report on a wiki, and performing and documenting offline action educational projects to promote effective digital citizenship at their local schools. Topics of study include digital: access, communications, literacy, security and safety, etiquette, rights and responsibilities, law, health and wellness, and commerce.

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. The project is designed to develop cultural understanding, skills with Web 2.0 and other software, experience in global collaboration and online learning, awareness of what it means to live and work in a flat world, while researching and discussing the ideas developed in Friedman's book, ‘The World is Flat’. Projects are constructed with an international set of classrooms (as mixed as we can make it depending on applications). Students also have the chance to interact with expert advisers and other classroom teachers and sounding board classrooms in a true flattened learning mode.

Information about the project can be found at http://tinyurl.com/flatclassroomguide
Application form found on the Apply tab of http://flatclassroomproject.net. Read more details on the New Projects Wiki.

Information about the project can be found at http://tinyurl.com/digiteenguide

 Application information is found on the Apply tab of at http://www.digiteen.org/

 Applications close September 15 for the Digiteen 10-2 project.

Watch this space for further announcements coming about:
  • Eracism Project: A global collaborative debate, to be offered Semester 1, October-December 2010
  • NetGenEd Project: Another Flat Classroom Project that joins students to research emerging technologies in an increasingly digital world
Read more about this award winning set of projects and live events http://www.flatclassroomproject.org/About

 Download our 2-page brochure to share with others http://www.flatclassroomproject.org/file/view/Flat_Classroom_Brochure_July2010.pdf

What are others saying about Flat Classroom Projects, Conferences and Workshops?
http://www.flatclassroomproject.org/Flat+Classroom+Participants+Speak+Up

Is there a Flat Classroom in your future?

“We are building bridges between students that our future can walk across”.
 
 
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!