The Flat Classroom Workshop @ASB Unplugged in Mumbai is coming soon!   This is an amazing opportunity to connect students and teachers together globally. 
All details are developing on the workshop wiki at http://asbunplugged2012.flatclassroomproject.org/

This will also be our first opportunity to launch our book at a conference. So we are very excited to be meeting up with many of the people who contributed to the book at ASB. http://flatclassroombook.com

Right now we invite you and your class to contribute short (very short) video clips so we can create another opening video similar to what we did 2 years ago. See http://flatclassroomconference.ning.com/video/flat-classroom-intro

What we need is students saying one or all of the words 'FLAT CLASS ROOM'. We also need some students/people to say a few words introducing the Flat Classroom.
Sentence starters:
'The Flat Classroom is.......'
'To me, being Flat means......'
'In my Flat Classroom I........'
'Flattening my Classroom means/is.....'
I am sure you can think of lots of things to say in one sentence!

We are on a timeline for this material......contributions due Feb 7. Please aim for high quality video. Let me know if you have produced something as I will then share a dropbox with you to send it. We will use ALL contributions, either in the opening or other work we do in the next 6 months.

many thanks everyone!
Julie

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Global collaboration starts with connecting yourself to the world. Students are the greatest textbook ever written for each other. The same is true for teachers. We are passionate about connecting and facilitating effective collaborations between classrooms because we’ve seen the power of how it can engage students and teach them the skills they need to be successful in the 21st century.

We want to bring in people who are nervous, who don’t know how, or who have tried to connect and were frustrated. We also want to bring back those teachers who tried it and got burned out. Now it is time to enlarge the circle of global collaborative excellence in a massive way.

It is our vision that if we can have enough educators linking together and learning about this at the same time, that a natural byproduct will be the creation of many new, exciting global collaborations. It is time to get past the cute stories of global collaboration into the nuts and bolts of the pedagogy that makes it happen. (Although there are a lot of powerful stories to tell.)

To help facilitate this conversation, we felt like that it would be best if we, the authors (Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis), step aside, and invite our friends Ben Curran and Neil Wetherbee of  @engaginged to facilitate the conversation. They’ve done book clubs before and this is another pedagogy that we want to work out: that of having a book club that is truly global. We’d like to do this to promote conversations that transcend borders. The easiest way to get this out of the box is to get out of the classroom and connect with other educators.

Every week for 10 weeks we will meet at an alternating time - 12 hours apart. (For the East Coast USA it is Sundays at 6 pm Eastern or Monday mornings at 8 am eastern - Visit our Book club calendar to convert these times to your Time Zone. Subscribe to this calendar via Google calendar to keep up with events.) This is Sunday evenings at 22:00GMT alternating with Monday mornings at 10:00GMT in our Blackboard Collaborateroom http://tinyurl.com/BookClubRoom .It is free and everyone is welcome. 


We’re also inviting the educators featured in each chapter to be with us for the conversations about “their” chapter. You’ll meet people from all over the world just like you who are doing wonderful, amazing things. This is a global story that transcends just one project, although we’re mighty proud of ours.

While you are welcome to just “drop in” you can register with the Book club mailing list  and we’ll remind you each week about the session, let you know who is coming, and we’ll mention any special events that we’ll be having as part of the launch. If you run your own book club, you’re welcome to come by the club anytime for ideas and discussion points.

The hashtag for our conversations is #flatclass and the book club is, of course, free. Anyone can join us. There’s no homework - just conversation and learning. We’ll all be there to discuss the future of education with each other. We hope global collaborators from around the world will join us and share their stories too. Conversations will hinge around our new book, Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds. The book will be available in ebook format, although we’re not sure yet which ebook formats.

So, to get ready:

1. Order the book                                   Amazon                                                Barnes and Noble                                 Pearson Publishing                                        ebook format
2. Sign up for the book club - run by Ben Curran & Neil Wetherbee from @engaginged 
3. Mark your calendar with the dates and times

Thank you to everyone who has made this possible Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher
Julie Lindsay@julielindsay 
Co-founders 
Flat Classroom Projects
@flatclassroom
Ben Curran & Neil Wetherbee @engaginged
4th and 5th Grade teachers 
Co-founders of Engaging Educators LLC 

How will this global book club work? Will it really transform my teaching?

Have you ever read a book about teaching and thoroughly enjoyed it, only to get done and ask yourself "Now what?" Or maybe you've read something that was motivating, inspirational and chock-full of ideas, only to find after sharing it with colleagues that they "just aren't that into it?" If so, this book club is for you. We hope it will be a gathering of inspired, motivated, similarly driven friends from around the globe. 

Here's how it will work...each week we will focus on approximately one chapter.  Each meeting will be divided roughly into three parts. The first part will focus on implementation--how all of us have or can implement the main theme of the week. We'll also dive into and discuss the activities (Vicki and Julie refer to them as "challenges") that are embedded in the book. The second part will be more of an open forum for everyone to discuss other topics in the chapter or other issues pertaining to the subject. This will be a great time for making connections with other teachers for possible collaborations and getting answers to questions that you have. Finally, and perhaps what we are most excited about is that each week we hope to be joined by the friends mentioned in each chapter.  They will be able to share their firsthand insight on the weekly topic as well as stories from their own experiences.

On top of all this, Engaging Educators will be providing short, free “boot camp” style webinars along the way to help you master some of the topics that might be new to you.
What we hope to facilitate is a perfect companion to Julie and Vicki's book, an experience that goes beyond "just reading" and demonstrates what a network of connected educators can learn and accomplish.

Welcome to the club!

Ben Curran & Neil Wetherbee @engaginged
4th & 5th Grade teachers and Co-founders of Engaging Educators LLC
technorati tags: flatclass engaginged bencurran neilwetherbee coolcatteacher julielindsay

_Dr. Zeitz recently blogged:
“In essence, we are building entrepreneurs who learn to identify and solve problems. The same thing holds true with teacher and administrators. Vicki Davis calls this sort of educator a Teacherpreneur.  Vicki was the only one I had ever heard use the term.” Co-founded in 2006 by Vicki Davis (Westwood Schools, USA) and Julie Lindsay (now in Beijing, China) in 2006, the Flat Classroom® Projects aim to ‘flatten’ or lower the classroom walls so that instead of each class working in isolation, two or more classes join virtually to become one large classroom. The project is designed to develop cultural understanding, skills using Web 2.0 digital technology, experience in global collaboration and online learning. Awareness of what it means to live and work in a flat world are emphasized, while students research and discuss the ideas developed in Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat or the Horizon Report, an annual report by the New Media Consortium.

To find out more about Flat Classroom® Projects, vist our website, our forthcoming book site, or our FaceBook page.

_Join us on Monday November 21,2011 at 10:00am Eastern USA [ http://tinyurl.com/3gc2jvc ] at http://tinyurl.com/FlatActionTalk for "Microsoft Innovative Teacher Project - Building Global Opportunities Together - Anywhere, Anytime" with Eva Brown and her pre-service teachers for a Flat Action Talk !

 




















The Global Education Conference is a week-long, world-wide event featuring sessions and
keynote addresses focused on education technology and global classroom initiatives.

This event brings together educators and innovators from around the world and will be held Monday, November 14 through Friday, November 18, 2011. The entire conference will be broadcast online using the Blackboard Collaborate platform (formerly known as Elluminate/Wimba).

The Global Education Conference is a collaborative and world-wide community effort organized
by the Global Education Collaborative and Classroom2.0. Our mission is to increase opportunities for globally-connecting education activities and initiatives. The event is solely focused on sharing ideas, examples and organizations related to connecting educators and classrooms around the world. We support the development of multicultural awareness and global competency in
students and teachers, and also want to bring attention to social justice issues.

Last year’s conference featured 387 sessions and 60 keynote addresses from 62 countries with
over 15,000 participant logins. Sessions were held in multiple time zones and multiple languages
over the five days, and are currently archived as a standing educational resource at http://
globaledcon.weebly.com/recordings.html.

For further information, please join our network at http://globaleducationconference.com and
follow us on Twitter (@GlobalEdCon) and using the hashtag #GlobalEd11.

 

The components of an effective
social bookmark.

Social bookmarks are like shared notecards on a topic you are researching and are part of pre-writing. Keep in mind that a good wiki page has good contextual hyperlinks - you need to know ahead of time what these hyperlinks are going to be.

1) The bookmark itself. This is only part and is not enough to consider it "social" bookmarking.

2) Summary (Description) - This is a memory jogger. You should be able to look at this like a notecard and have your diigo library up and able to look at it while writing your wiki and not have to go back to the individual website for more data. If you have to go back then you probably didn't do a good job on notecard - or - you're plaigarizing. The summary should typically have two things -- a summary/ memory jogger/ also notes to the other people reading this bookmark (this is an important part of what we're saying or I like the video on this presentation.) and it should also have a good quote if you want to quote the article.

3) Send it the Group
If you don't send it to the group they don't see it. This is the process of "vetting." If you just used our tags in the general diigo area, we could start getting "spammy" stuff of people promoting their products. We are a learning community studying digital citizenship together and have agreed to work together.

4) Tags - These are labels used to organize topics and help you. Most bookmarks have two kinds of tags.

a) Standard Tags - We agree upon tags for our assigned topics. This helps us share information between each other. I can look for everything tagged with my topic and find other things that my partners in the learning community have found on that topic. This is called taxonomy. Your teacher may also have everything bookmarked by students at your school use the school's official tag just to find them.

b) Personal Tags - I can create personal tags for every topic just to make life easier for me. I could use the tag important or I may see that subtopics are emerging, so for example, I may find a video on sexting but it is part of digital_safety or privacy - I might add sexting as a topic. If enough people use this method then we can see patterns emerge in our topic about what our research is finding. This is called folksonomy. It is meaning that emerges when a lot of "folks" work together.

We are delighted to invite you to an online 'Meet the Flat Classroom®' meeting early next week. This is an opportunity to learn more about Flat Classroom® Projects LLC and our non-profit organisation, Flat Classroom® Conference and Live Events Inc.
At this gathering we will -

• Explain and review all current projects
• Share Flat Classroom® Certified Teacher course details
• Detail our upcoming live events and workshops
• Talk about how to get involved with Flat Classroom® as a classroom teacher, as a leader as a pre-service teacher and as an expert advisor
• Share excitement and details about our book, "Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds: Move to Global Collaboration One Step at a Time", due for release January 2012
• and more.....!

Come and join us in BlackBoard Collaborate and hear how you can connect with other educators and students globally and embed collaborative learning into your curriculum.

Time and Date: Monday August 29 8:30pm EDT, Tuesday August 30, 8:30am China
Check your time at Meet the Flat Classroom on timeanddate.com

For those who have already applied to projects for 2011-12, this is not the project launch meeting, but an opportunity to learn more about Flat Classroom®. We hope you can join us!
The online meeting room URL:
http://tinyurl.com/flatbusiness1112

Applications are invited now for a selection of internationally recognised and award winning global projects run by Flat Classroom® to start in September 2011. Co-founders Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay are excited to be offering these opportunities for classrooms globally to connect, co-create and learn together in a carefully designed and supported digital environment.

The Digiteen™ Project explores digital citizenship through interaction and provides an opportunity for students to not only talk about digital citizenship, but experience via online connection, collaboration, shared research and presentation. It also has an action project component where a classroom designs an action to be carried out in their own school community and then shared back to the global partnership.

The Flat Classroom® 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 ‘A Week in the Life...’ Project aims to join Elementary School classrooms globally with a view to exploring what life is like in each area/country through discussion, sharing and collecting multimedia to create final products together. The curriculum focus is Interdisciplinary, how we live, how we communicate, cultural understanding and awareness.

Entry to a each project is via application and subscription. In order to help meet the subscription price, teachers can apply for a limited number of sweat equity positions as ‘lead teachers’.

All details for each of these outstanding projects can be found linked from the Flat Classroom® website. We welcome inquiries to fcp@flatclassroom.org

Watch this space for more announcements of new projects coming, including the repeat of the popular ‘Eracism’ Project, as well as an opportunity for educators to join our next Flat Classroom® Certified Teacher course, also starting in September 2011.

Also, our book, ‘Flattening Classroom, Engaging Minds: Move to Global Collaboration one Step at a Time’ is due for release January 2012. Find out more at www.flatclassroombook.com

 Using the tools learned from the completion of the Flat Classroom® Certified Teacher Pilot Program in March of 2011, Theresa Allen gained the confidence and knowledge to create and put into practice a project of her own, Virtual Vacation.  Students from Sweden and her 8th grade students collaborated in small groups using Skype to talk live to one another and Google Docs to eventually create a presentation on the vacation of their choice.  The Flat Classroom® Certified Teacher program prepared her to create a project where students from almost any part of the world can participate.  The goal of the Flat Classroom® Certified Teacher Program is "for teachers to become leaders in global collaboration within their schools and internationally" (Julie Lindsay, Vicki Davis).  Theresa also managed the Digiteen 11-2 project with students from 3 countries.

Ethnocentrism is a problem because it can perpetuate prejudice and stereotypes against
certain students in a classroom or become a form of discrimination directed against certain students on the basis of their ethnic group and background. Therefore, my research examined the working relationships of students, and whether the use of digital technologies (i.e., Web 2.0 technologies) by digital natives can help reduce the level of ethnocentrism in cross-cultural classrooms during the Net Generation Education 2009 and 2010 and Horizon 2008 projects.   The research used a qualitative method of inquiry, case study approach (Timeframe:
March 1, 2008 to June 2, 2010), and analytic induction method as the data analysis strategy. The data sources were interviews from the coordinators of classrooms with students located in Canada, Korea, Pakistan, Qatar, and United States, responses to predetermined questions created by the project coordinators/creators from students located in multiple countries, and a review of the online wiki discussions from the participating students and teachers located in multiple countries.   The review of literature during the research process indicated that ethnocentrism is
biologically rooted within people of all cultures, which help to explain why there is such an extensive historical record of its occurrence. The findings of the data analysis indicate that there was a minimum level of ethnocentrism detected during the Net Generation Education and Horizon projects. The findings also indicated how the use of Web 2.0 technologies heavily influences the factors that impede ethnocentrism and how the impeding factors overwhelm the encouraging factors.   The patterns developed from analyzing the data illustrate how the working relationships of students related to ethnocentrism are positive when using Web 2.0 technologies, students are willing to work and socialize with students from other countries, and furthermore, the positive working relationships outweighed the negative working relationships during these types of global collaborations and ethnocentrism was deemed minimal in most cases.   With all this information in hand, I concluded that the use of Web 2.0 technologies during the Net Generation Education and Horizon projects was successful in the fight against ethnocentrism in this cross cultural learning environment mainly because ethnocentrism was reduced to and/or maintained at a minimal level after only a few weeks of project participation.