From Audrey Hill, a Grade 7 teacher with 100-150 students has asked for some mentoring in creating her own flat classroom style project for this grade level. We This is her vision:
“I am interested in creating a flat classroom style project that researches and collaborates on different issues. I want to use “flatness” to research, discuss, debate, express and inform on various meaningful issues that affect our world… I dont' have a list of issues yet, because I'd like to interact with other teachers in my cluster to help to develop their awareness of topical issues of the day and also work with them to get some ideas from them about issues that they are interested in (with some controls from me, since they often choose high interest/low value issues related to their favorite celebrities, etc)… My students are diverse in every way possible which gives me the ability to give them very advanced work and requires me to give some of them less challenging assignments. Issues that I have in mind include: sustainability, health care, NCLB, violence in video games and movies, dress codes, constitutional issues (freedom of speech, search and seizure) etc. The goal would be to pair groups of students up from other states or other countries to work on, research, debate and create product related to their issues, as with the FlatClassroom.
I would love any help I can get in creating this program and finding partners. “
She has created a wiki at http://www.citizenworks.pbwiki.com/ and invites you to join in if you would like to do this.
This is grassroots, don't wait for a formal invitation. Also, we are having discussions about this sort of thing at the Ning for those who want to flatten their classrooms and get some advice from others who've done the same http://flatclassroompresents.ning.com.
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