Announcing the Net Generation Education Project

As announced at the Flat Classroom conference this past Monday, the Net Generation Education Project is the replacement for the Horizon Project.

Last year, Don Tapscott keynoted the Horizon Project which focuses on having students envision the future of education via wiki and video, using the Horizon Report from the New Media Consortium and Educause and included this project in his new Book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World.

So, the next level of “flattening” is to not only have classrooms connect but to have the classrooms connect in new and more far-reaching ways with the authors of their books. This has been done with Karl Fisch's Whole New Mind Project as they work with Dan Pink and certainly with Will Richardson and Anne Davis and the Secret Life of Bees.

But this is also in that genre but a little different.

In this project, the students will interact on a jointly created Ning with Don Tapscott on a weekly basis as he posts questions to the Discussion forum and leaves video messages to the students.  It will be a read/write project.  He will also interact LIVE via a webinar with the details to be announced soon.

Additionally, the Discovery Educators Network is going to be providing and sharing tips and information on effective video presentations and how-to's and an amazing book club group for educators.

We will be studying this year's Horizon Report but adding to it, the intro and Chapter 5 from Don's book:  (Rethinking Education) chapters to the reading assignments for students.    Students will be divided into groups to analyze some of the key trends in reworking education to create a wiki report.  Each team will have a project manager and assistant project manager to help facilitate the work on the team.

Each student will cast their vision for the future of education with a video to be uploaded on our project ning.  All videos will be automatically entered into Don Tapscott's Net Generation Education Challenge competition and could win scholarship money for college.  This is based directly on the Horizon Project from last year – just adding interaction with a wide variety of resources and people who believe in the common vision of creating the read/write classroom … going to the next level.

Don is such a busy man and we appreciate his willingness to work with this project.

NOw, you do not HAVE to be a part of the project with Julie and I to join the Ning and participate in Don's challenge competition – so go ahead and do that.  But if you are ready to have your students collaborate and work globally… fill out this form.  (Link to google form)

Our tentative timeline:

• 1/26 – 2/2 – Application process for classrooms
  • 2/1 – 3 pm EST – Information Meeting
• 2/2 – 2/7 – Selection Process (classes will be notified as soon as they are selected)
• 2/6 – Ning, wiki, and google group are “live” by this date
• 2/9 – Final announcements of Classrooms
• 2/11 – Greeting from Don posted to the Ning via video – this may be his “author keynote” or he may choose to have a challenge each week and have it be small pieces.
  • Weekly- discussions posted to the forum (can we pick a day and a time for this to happen?)  Will Don have a blog on the site as well?
• 2/11-2/18 – “Handshake process” – Students join Ning – post introductions
  • 2/18 – Teams announced
• 2/18 – 3/2 – Research phase of project
  • 3/2 – Wikis complete
• 3/1 – Suffern Middle School Student Keynote
• Some time in March, there will be a live session with Don Tapscott
• 3/3 – 3/31 – Movie Artifact phase of project (note that there will be some overlap between Research and Movie Artifact)
•    *Storyboarding 3/3 – 3/8
•    *Outsourced video requests posted to the Ning by 3/10 (we would like students to be able to do this with a blog post on the Ning and tag it outsourced – we can then add a menu item for everything tagged outsource_request and students can sign up with a reply and post a link in the comments, this is a change from the last project but will work better)
• 3/31 – Final Deadline for All Movies to be posted
• 4/1 – 4/8 – Post project reflections, student summits