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.
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.
Here are some guiding questions to get them thinking about how to respond and start a discussion or foster an existing discussion:
- Is global collaboration using emerging technologies a pandora’s box? Why?
- How can we best prepare the ’17 year old Internet/connected world’ to mature and grow into ‘adulthood’?
- How has the flat world impacted on you as a teenager? as a teacher?
- What place do immersive worlds and virtual realities have in education?