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Flat Classroom Project Comes to AAS
Recently the high school Multimedia class finished their culminating work in the Flat Classroom Project. The Flat Classroom Project is a worldwide collaborative project that was inspired by Thomas Friedman's book "The World is Flat", first published in 2005 in which Friedman discusses the implications of our 'flatter' world due to advances in technology, communication, globalization and wireless infrastructure. Julie Lindsay of Beijing International School, China and Vicki Davis of the Westwood Schools in Georgia, USA first developed the project to get classrooms out of isolation so that students could work collaboratively despite being worlds apart.
The project is broken down into 11 topics based on the “Flatteners” that Friedman identified in his book: Connecting the World Online, World Wide Web, Workflow Software, Uploading: the Changing Shape of Information, Web 2.0, Globalization and Outsourcing, Google, PLEs (Personal Learning Environments) and Social Networking, Mobile and Ubiquitous, Virtual Communication and Wireless Connectivity. Each student is assigned to one of those topics and ideally no two students from the same school will be in the same topic.
While the project has several facets using a variety of ICT tools like Ning (a specially customized social network space), wikis and other Web 2.0 tools, the two main components are a collaborative Wiki editing based on student research and a final summative video done individually. At the end of the project, videos are judged by a variety of non-participating teachers or other interested experts from around the world and 3 or 4 awards from each topic are announced and published.
This was the 2nd time that AAS participated in the project and student videos were submitted just before Spring Break which thankfully coincided with the project's official deadline. On May 3rd, the winners of the 2011-1 session of the Flat Classroom Project were announced and three AAS students were among those lauded. Congratulations go to Eden (grade 9), who won 3rd place for her video on Web 2.0 tools; to Su (grade 10), who earned 2nd place for her video on Google in Current News; and to Nora (grade 9), who also won 2nd place for her video on PLEs and Social Networking. They and their AAS classmates should be proud of their participation and contributions in the project which involved 6 countries, 21 classrooms, 552 students and a total of 279 videos. Good work AAS!
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