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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.

ideasLAB aims to challenge the way we think about learning and teaching, and find new ways to take technology into the classroom.

Over the past two years I've been approached by several people from around the world inquiring about our World of Warcraft in School Project. Yet, despite the numerous contacts, I'm only aware of two other schools/school systems who've started similar projects. Of course, there are many potential barriers from costs to people-barriers. Craig Lawson (@midlawsondle) and I have worked over the past year to create a full-year, standards-aligned language arts course that is based on World of Warcraft. We have several goals in doing so: 1. We want to demonstrate that there is value in considering commercial, off-the-shelf games for curricular integration. 2. We want to share our work with anyone else who might take it on, and in doing so, expand the network of educators who are exploring the potential that games like this hold for the classroom. 3. We want to create a model (using the term loosely, here) upon which similar projects, perhaps using other games might be built. 4. We hope that others will look at the work and expand on it, improve it, and share it. 5. We want to show that, "Yes! You can do this."

The Watershed Dynamics project is a partnership between the Office of STEM Education Partnerships (OSEP) at Northwestern University, the GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) program, CUAHSI (the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc.). Each organization represents a group of people interested in hydrology and science education. Working together, curriculum developers at OSEP, the worldwide network of science educators in GLOBE, and scientists and engineers from CUAHSI, have created tools and curricula to support student investigations of the watershed. This curriculum is designed to teach students about water availability and the impacts of human activty on the watersheds we live in. Watershed Dynamics promotes the use of authentic scientific data and technology in the high school classroom. Students and teachers learn to use GIS tools and various data sets to answer questions about the environment.

Research Profile: The GoodPlay Project With support from the MacArthur Foundation, the GoodPlay project explores the ethical character of young people's activities in the new digital media. We seek to understand how young people conceptualize their participation in virtual worlds and the ethical considerations that guide their conduct. We are exploring five themes which we believe are salient in the digital age, with implications for ethics-identity, privacy, ownership and authorship, credibility, and participation. In the first phase of our project, we studied youth ages 15-25 who participate in online games, social networking sites, and other online communities. Our methods included in-depth interviews and the posing of ethical dilemmas. Based on this research, and in collaboration with Project New Media Literacies, we developed classroom exercises to encourage high school-aged youth to reflect on the ethical implications of their online activities. In the current phase, we are studying the ethical perspectives of youth ages 10-14 and of influential adults in young people's lives. We are also studying "good participation," focusing on youth who use digital media to facilitate the achievement of civic and political goals.

Free surveys of teachers and school leaders that will measure 21stCentury teaching and learning skills in your school. People all over the world are talking about the need to transform education to align with the realities of life and work in the 21stCentury. This is not just about the effective use of technology. It's about developing kids who are deeply engaged in the learning process and taking the initiative to learn. But how do you make this transformation happen in your school and classrooms? How do you measure your success?

We are living in an era of receding glaciers, accelerating loss of species habitat, unprecedented population migration, growing inequalities within and between nations, rising concerns over resource depletion, and shifting patterns of interaction and identity. This website provides 11 geographic investigations aligned to the geographic questions in the NRC Understanding Our Changing Planet report.

This has some interesting attempts at classroom projects....the presentation was rookie, which distracted me no end. poor prep and most of the effort seems to be focused on polling the class on a web page or via sms. Not really a good use of mapping or polling. Still, look over the site for what is useful. Having said that, check out the hosting org site...see above link.

The Assessment and Teaching of 21st-Century Skills (ATC21S) is a research project that proposes ways of assessing 21st-century skills and encourages teaching and adopting those skills in the classroom.

Transforming learning through global collaboration