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Created by Theresa Allen, Flat Classroom Certified teacher and Project Manager for Digiteen project for the ISTE 2013 Spotlight presentation - 'Do you co-create at the Elementary Level? Flat Classrooms Do!'

"Thank you to all the amazing students and teachers who participated. If you are interested in Flat Classroom Projects, go to http://www.flatclassroomproject.net/about.html." This is what makes Flat Classroom so special and unique - A Project Manager who takes the time to blog about the project and suggest improvements.

This is what makes Flat Classroom so special and unique - A Project Manager who takes the time to blog about the project and suggest improvements.

Aaron Maurer, middle school teacher with student teams participating in Eracism 12-2, shares his thoughts about the final debate where one student team debated in the HS round.

"Collaborative projects broaden teachers' horizons, too, connecting them with colleagues from around the world. Vicki Davis (@coolcatteacher) and Julie Lindsay (@julielindsay), founders of the Flat Classroom Project, had never met face-to-face when they launched their first collaborative project several years ago. Now, they have co-authored a book, Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds to share their field-tested insights about collaborative PBL. They lead teachers from around the world on several "flat" projects annually, using technology to overcome distances and connect learners in shared inquiry and problem solving. "

Interesting project that potentially joins students across countries and cultures to discuss and create media based on 'Does my digital me reflect the real me?'

There is a fantastic feature on wikispaces that lets you drill down by student and see what work they've done. If you click on "recent changes" and then type in the userid and date, you can see the work. I now have students turn in their work on a google checklist - when they edit over a period of time, they type in their id and the dates and paste the link and I can grade with one click. This saves so much time and gives me a digital dashboard of all of the work they've done on a project.

I want to point out Terry Smith, a judge for Flat Classroom this past 8 weeks, and what he did as he did his judging. He used the process of judging to see what the students were saying about edtech and current trends as well as to have current information to share his students, but he also modeled excellent feedback by leaving messages for the students he judged. It is the words that communicate presence and the students who received messages from him came to me with excitement. While many of our amazing volunteer judges do this, I wanted to point it out because he did it so well. This is the link to the thread where we talked about what he did but you can also click on his name and see the kinds of comments he left and the videos he reviewed. This is the kind of "flattening" that creates mutually beneficial symbiotic learning relationships but also gives us good feedback for improving what we're doing with the students. You can volunteer to judge projects on this website as well.

Vicki, this link does not seem to work? It takes me to a blank comment form on the Ning.

Silvia Tolisano @langwitches shares excellent ways to participate in a conference virtually, focusing on the Innovate 2013 event happening in Brazil this month http://www.innovate2013.org/

Wonderful section of Bernajean Porter's Coaching HEAT wiki. The collection of online tools suggested here are organized into categories of instructional FUNCTIONS - many tools are able to serve in more than one role. While there are many, many more tools not listed here - the goal of this page is to give a framework for thinking about ALL the tools as providing functions in the learning, thinking and communication process.

Interesting site - The Collaboration Skills link goes to 'Seven Norms of Collaboration'

All you ever wanted to know about Edmodo!

"MARK YOUR CALENDARS for May 2, 2013!! Megaconference Jr., now in its 10th year, is an international program designed to give students in elementary through secondary schools around the world the opportunity to communicate, collaborate and contribute to each other's learning in real time, using advanced multi-point video conferencing technology. Megaconference Jr. addresses local and national curriculum standards in multiple subject areas. It will also help students and teachers develop the capacity to effectively utilize high-speed networks, videoconferencing and other emerging technologies to enhance learning experiences."

This article is perfect for librarians wanting to utilize free books and help students "check them out" (if you can even use that term.) Here are three methods, the only thing I would add is that you can create a library with Evernote instead of springpad as well. Pass this one on. "three methods for creating and sharing a digital classroom library with your students. In all three cases, I'm going to assume that you have a source of free eBooks (Amazon's Free Popular Classics, Google's Play Store Top Free Books, or Project Gutenberg) and an app to read those books (Amazon's Kindle app, Google's Play Books app, Aldiko for Android, or iBooks for iOS)."

RSS is still here. I like this RSS guide written for students at LaGuardia College. Students should know how to build an RSS reader and subscribe to things like Google news search and google scholar to build a research tool that will pull information to you on the topics of interest.