Monday 23 September 2013

Flat Classroom Project Kickoff

I have been given the opportunity to work in collaboration with our Social Studies consultant and a primary classroom as they participate in the Flat Classroom: A week in the Life project.  As stated on the website, "The aim of the project is to join Elementary School classrooms globally with a view to exploring what life is like in each country through discussion, sharing and collecting multimedia to create final products together."  

Over the course of several months, students are given the opportunity to interact and collaborate digitally with students from around the world.  Students practice digital citizenship skills as they work to complete multimedia projects that help answer the essential questions:
1. What are the similarities and differences of children around the world?
2. How can we connect to each other through or commonalities?
3. How does your geography where you live impact your topic?

Some of the Web 2.0 tools introduced as part of the project include Edmodo, Wikispaces, and Voice Thread.  I met with the classroom teacher early this week to assist with some of the initial set-up tasks.  Project assignments this week include registering for Edmodo; posting basic class information to the project wiki; and completing the "handshake" activity.  For this activity we have been asked to find a picture that represents our community, and to post a number of hints about our community.  This picture is then loaded into Jigsaw Planet and shared with other classes taking part in the project.  Over the next few weeks students will be divided into working groups to collaborate with other students around the world.  I am looking forward to participating in this project over the course of the semester.

Accomplishments This Week
  • Shared a tech issue with my social network and received a response in less then 15 minutes (Thanks Alec!)
  • Setup a LiveBinder to begin collecting EC&I 831 resources
  • Attended Flat Classroom project kick-off meeting
  • Gave two half-day Mimio training sessions 
  • Gave one Intro to Mimio session
  • Gave one Windows 8 training session
  • Used TodaysMeet as part of a PD session

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