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What is the Flat Classroom™ Project? The Flat Classroom™ Project is a global collaborative project that joins together middle and senior high school students. This project is part of the emerging tend in internationally-aware schools to embrace a holistic and constructivist educational approach to work collaboratively with others around the world in order to create students who are competitive and globally-minded. The project was co-founded by Vicki Davis (Westwood Schools, USA) and Julie Lindsay(Beijing (BISS) International School, China) in 2006when Julie (then in Bangladesh) and Vicki joined their classrooms together for the first time to study and emulate the emerging flattened learning environment. The Flat Classroom Project 2006 is featured in Chapter 13, 'If it's not happening it's because you're not doing it', of the 2007 edition of Thomas Friedman's book, The World is Flat' upon which it was based. (pages 501-503) 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. This is done through the Internet using Web 2.0 tools such as Wikispaces and Ning. The Project uses Web 2.0 tools to make communication and interaction between students and teachers from all participating classrooms easier. The topics studied and discussed are real-world scenarios based on 'The World is Flat' by Thomas Friedman.

Eracism At the Flat Classroom(tm) Conference in Doha, Qatar in January 2009, a visionary group of students proposed that a series of debates be held to promote awareness of racism on a global basis and how we need to work together to solve the world's problems. This multi-national group of four students proposed their project and were promoted through an extensive voting process including a global vote on the next project to be run by the Flat Classroom(tm) project founders, Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay.

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 skills and 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.

Flat Classroom Elementary Project

The point of the Flat Classroom book is to promote global collaboration. By encouraging book clubs to happen during the launch, the resources we've created to link classrooms will kick in. The book has: an embedded PD project, Twitter hashtags, Mobile device qr codes, an online forum, and more.

Transforming learning through global collaboration