How to Flatten a Classroom

Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay started the Flat Classroom Project profiled in our blog entry
"Taking Down the Classroom Walls: The Flat Classroom and Horizons Projects" last week. In a recent post at the Techlearning blog, Davis outlines the phases teachers and students need to go through to achieve a Flat Classroom project or similar beyond-the-classroom collaboration. At each phase, critical online skills are modeled and taught, which contribute to the success of the Flat Classroom Project, the Horizons Project and similar online collaborative projects and programs.

The first two phases Davis outlines connect students at a school to prepare them for online collaboration. The first phase, "The INTRA-connected Classroom," connects the students in a single classroom with each other. Davis uses a Ning or other "walled" or private blog, instant messaging and Skype within the class, and a wiki for "intraclass collaboration." In this phase, Davis uses a backchannel to "teach appropriate behavior and what it means to be a professional student." She adds that using the technology is easy but "the behavior takes time and vigilance." The second phase, "The INTERconnected Classroom," links classes within a school or site to each other with a Ning or walled blog, interclass projects (good for cross-grade and cross-age collaboration), a wiki, and asynchronous communication through blogs, videos, photos and other non-real-time online sharing and collaborating. This phase, Davis writes, "helps you pick up on potentially troublesome habits of students while ALL students are still under your direction and policies."

The third and fourth phases connect a class to off-site experts and groups. "Flat Classroom: Many to One Connections AND One to Many Connections with Teacher Direction," phase three, connects a class to one person or a single group, like another class. This phase also helps guide and model appropriate behavior. In this phase, a class presents to another class or individual (Davis seems to prefer Skype), interacts with an expert through videosharing or a wiki, and uses public/anonymous blogs (but only for students with parental permission). Phase four, "Flat Classroom: Many to Many with Teacher Management," brings many students together collaborating on a digital project. The teacher still guides group behavior and interactions as needed and is also available to help with technical or project issues. Students write and edit collaboratively and engage in digital storytelling. Experts and other teachers are used to widen the range of experiences and voices heard. RSS readers are used for self-directed student research and learning and to access assignments on a group wiki. Davis writes that this phase can be "overwhelming" but I think her phases are great preparation for the challenge.

"Flat Classroom: Many to Many Connections with STUDENT Management" is the fifth phase and brings teacher and students to the Horizons project level, combining the Flat Classroom with student management of the project and learning teams. Davis emphasizes the need to move through phases to give teachers time to learn and contemplate the process. At Davis' Cool Cat Teacher blog (the Techlearning post is simulposted here), Davis writes about her current classes' progress through Horizons 2008. She has a "Most Valuable Posts" category with useful information for all kinds of online teaching and collaboration. There are also links to wikis and Davis' Cool Cat Teacher podcast for more information and updates.

SOURCE: "The Five Phases of Flattening a Classroom" 3/28/08
photo courtesy of JohnLeGear, used under this Creative Commons license

Taking Down the Classroom Walls: The Flat Classroom and Horizons Projects

In a recent blog post, Brenda Dyck, a writer at Education World, examines how to make old pen-and-paper assignments "new" through Web 2.0 tools. One telecollaborative project she praises is the Flat Classroom Project which uses a mix of free Web 2.0 collaborative tools. The Flat Earth Project ran in 2006, 2007 and has a current program. A sister project, Horizons, in its second year, is running from now until June 2008.

The Flat Classroom Project is a collaborative project for middle and high school students started by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis in 2006. The goal is to use Web 2.0 tools to aid communication between participating classrooms. In 2006, the topics classes studied and discussed all came from The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman. The main idea of the project is to "lower the classroom walls" to eliminate the isolation that being in a classroom can encourage and to open students and teachers to more collaborative, project-based learning. Lindsay, teaching at the International School Dhaka in Bangladesh, and Davis, at Westwood High School in Camilla, GA, linked their classrooms with various free tools like Blogger and EduSpace blogs, wikis, videos at YouTube and TeacherTube, del.icio.us bookmarking, Facebook and MySpace accounts to connect students and have discussions, Flickr for pictures and Meebo for instant messaging when project managers held office hours for consultation, questions and other needs.

Alexander Russo reported on the 2007 Flat Classroom Project in Edutopia, noting that the four to six week program was usually part of a computer science or media literacy course at the participating schools. Instead of using email and MySpace for student contact and discussion, in 2007 Davis and Lindsay created a Ning page for networking and sharing audio and video files. Davis said the Ning made student interaction easier to monitor and schedule: "The connecting piece is the most difficult part...Last year, we were doing it over email. We couldn't supervise. Here, all the group dynamics are out in the open for the teachers to observe." Another free program on the Web, AirSet, was used to schedule interactions. The big challenge with linking the classes is the asynchronous nature of international communication, a lesson students and teachers in the Flat Classroom Project had to learn. Davis said, "I'm trying to get my students to understand that the world is becoming asynchronous...The workday flows around the world, and I want my students to understand that while they're sleeping, others are moving things forward." The Flat Classroom Project mainly used live videoconferencing (usually through Skype the first year) for initial planning and final student presentations.

The Flat Classroom Project won multiple awards in 2006 and 2007. A 2008 Flat Classroom Project is underway (details were not readily available). A sister project, Horizons, is also running a second year now until June. The Horizons Project is using Elluminate and other tools to link eleven classrooms in six countries. More information on the Flat Classroom Project can be found at the FCP wiki, the FCP Overview page, and the FCP Ning. Videos by Lindsay and Davis discussing the 2006 Flat Classroom project can be found at the wiki, YouTube or TeacherTube. The Horizons Project 2008 has a wiki with more information on its current program. Davis also has an award-winning blog with updates on her classes' involvement with Horizons 2008.

SOURCE: "Using Web 2.0 Tools to Breathe New Life into Old Projects" 03/21/08
SOURCE: "Global Education On a Dime: A Low-Cost Way to Connect" 11/12/07
photo courtesy of dullhunk, used under this Creative Commons license