Episode 8: Flat Classrooms
Flat Classrooms are about removing the boundaries of geography and time, and enabling students to work with other students wherever they might be in the world. In this episode we talk with Janet Barnstable from Oak Park, Illinois and Sharon Peters from Montreal, Quebec. Both Janet and Sharon are leading proponents of collaborative online learning projects, getting their students to work on projects with kids in other countries by leveraging the power of the Internet. The term Flat Classrooms derives from Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat”.
Some links relevant to this episode…
- Percy Julian Middle School
- Lower Canada College
- Sharon’s Blog
- Thomas Friedman - The World is Flat
- Thomas Friedman talking at MIT (Video)
- Time Magazine - How to Bring our Schools out of the 20th Century
- Global Virtual Classroom
- Thinkquest
- Global Dreamers
- Cyberteen E-zine
- Cyber Dictionary Project
- CUSeeMe Video Conferencing
- Skype IP Telephony
- Oz Teachers Travel Buddy Project
As always, your feedback is more than welcome! If you have any tips or additional links that might be useful for collaborative projects please share them by dropping a link in the comments below.
January 1st, 2007 at 2:49 pm
How wonderful that you interviewed 2 such great ladies.
I have met both of them — and they are remarkable people.
Thanks for the interview!!!
Jennifer
http://www.technospud.com
January 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Chris, you did an awesome job of editing and polishing the interview. It was a terrific experience and your podcasts have been a wonderful discovery. Keep up the great work! I look forward to hearing a lot more from you in the future.
Sharon
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:19 pm
[…] Please do check out the podcast which is posted over at The Virtual Staff Room - Chris does an awesome job of editing and presentation. I asked him later which software he uses and, besides audacity, he uses something called the levelator (little app that will bring all the audio levels to the same level) that I want to pass on as a recommendation. […]
January 5th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Chris,
You are really on to something with these podcasts.
January 5th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Thanks Chris and ladies. You have really put forward some great ideas. More experimentation coming up, I hope.
January 26th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Another worthwhile reference text is entitled: e-moderating by Gilly Salmon. Its focus seems to be at the tertiary level and long distance education. However, the major concepts to be an online facilitator can be easily adapted to high school level.
September 12th, 2007 at 5:23 am
[…] Flat Classrooms Flat Classrooms are about removing the boundaries of geography and time, and enabling students to work with other students wherever they might be in the world. (tags: blog web2.0 classroom slict) […]