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This excerpt from our January 2012 Flat Classroom Book was written on a plane returning from Qatar and the first Flat Classroom conference . January 2009. I'm printing the full text here as editing is forcing me to cut it down for the final book! There are a few times in my life, I tell my husband, that I feel like I've put my "gutts on a page." This vision from this plane ride has in it a lot of what I do. Oh that you could see this too! I am nestled amidst the quiescent heaps of jetlagged tourists, businessmen, families, and a mom with one colicky golden haired baby while contentedly listening to Van Morrison about 20,000 feet above the border between Iran and Iraq pondering the meaning of life.  The lady two seats up is watching Eagle Eye (a movie) with Arabic subtitles. The man beside me left his seat a while back to remove his Arabic garb and put on a pair of comfortable black flannel sleeping pants. Katie, my exhausted student from south Georgia USA snuggles ...

Julie Lindsay and I have been testing a really cool automation tool for the back end of all of the Flat Classroom projects . From the book The 4-Hour Workweek, (a great book - not geared towards education, but many ideas for efficiency in there), I heard of FogBugz and I must say I'm smitten. This is a program that Timothy Ferriss, author of the 4-Hour work week, uses to track email from his companies and interface with his virtual assistant. Scalability is the key and we're working to become scalable and efficient so that our projects can be run as lean as possible while also providing the highest level of engagement and interaction between students and responsiveness to the teachers. Screenshot of Fogbugz showing some of the current cases with our projects Work Flow Software Thus far, it has been run through google groups and email. However, we've not included work flow software to allow for tracking. (Funny as we study work flow software in our projects!)  So...

We are all so busy.  Perhaps that is why I'm moved to tears when I see all the volunteers that engage to make all of the Flat Classroom TM projects such an amazing experience.  We've worked hard (and spent our own money) to keep Flat Classroom TM projects free and appreciate Elluminate providing administrative support to keep this project going. IT has truly been a grassroots effort of educators - must like the open source movement that made the Apache web server possible, we are seeing an open education movement harnessing the power of our engagement and work and truly it is an honor to work with you as we see this happen.  You are an honor to work with. Right now, we have several things that we could use your support with.  And remember, your support is your time, but it is also the VERY VALUABLE feedback you provide on the weaknesses, improvements, and things that you think could be done better or differently.  Here is an overview and where to go for mo...

 Oh, we're so excited about the new project, Eracism .  ( www.eracismproject.org ) Please take a read and sign up if you'd like to pilot a classroom or serve as an advisor, debate coach, or judge.  We appreciate Elluminate signing on as a sponsor of Flat Classroom(tm) projects because this has allowed us to keep the projects free and open to everyone AND freed us up to start new projects such as this one.  Also look for an elementary project coming early next year for science. ( Send me an email if you're interested in that one also.) 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 t...

It is always great to hear the reflections and thoughts of others.  So many things that happen grow far past how they start.  Here are a few that have come across my desk lately. Love listening to an AP Statistics Teacher from Mary Institute County Day School ( an amazing School in St. Louis) talk about the Flat Classroom Project - she does a great job of describing the structure.  The audio is a bit soft but you can hear it if you turn it all the way up! Minhaaj ur Rehman, Pakistan presents his views as a judge Then, just got an email from Joan Huntley, at Stonehill International School in India, an attendee of the Flat Classroom Conference and participant in NetGenEd. "I'm not sure if I mentioned this or not, but we have two nice collaborations going between our school and George Haines in New York as a result of my meeting George and talking to him at the Qatar conference. One project is with Kate Dickson, our music teacher, where the kids will collabo...

The following video is from a student assigned to explain Thomas Friedman 's first trend " Connecting the World Online " using the concept of "Play" (we called it the Fun Factor ) from Dan Pink's book A Whole New Mind . (I'm going to use this video to introduce the terminology of Web 2.0 with my younger students!) It is amazing how well this video DOES teach, but the kids had so much fun (as you can tell.) This video was created in a little over a week and uses the green screen techniques taught by Dean Shareski as a by product of his amazing keynote . (Actually, we used a $25 green sheet of chromakey plastic from ebay! Not perfect, but hey, it worked!) Again, this project has accelerated my students far past what any of us seven teachers could do alone. It is not something any one of us teachers can get our arms around or really take credit for. We are facilitators, the kids grow and learn like a moving, evolving organism of thought, excitement, and...

Those of you who get my podcast feed , you'll get this via your podcast manager (I use iTunes.) However, this discussion with Terry Freedman and Darren Kuropatwa, two of our judges for the Flat Classroom project was a great discussion! I'll be posting Julie's interview with Jeff Utecht and Jo McCleay as well. powered by ODEO