Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Flat Classroom Challenge #15: Project Re-Design

It has been a long time since I have taken time to really focus on my Flat Classroom Project that I worked on called Global Gossip. I was able to test and sample out parts of this project. Here is the wiki where the project is located - http://coffeechug.wikispaces.com/

I have bigger plans for the project this year. I am currently reworking some of components to this project. Twitter is not always readily available in schools(like mine). I am working on ways to work around Twitter or make it more accessible. Twitter was very important to the project and provided great benefit so I need to really focus in on this piece.

The project itself is quite open where the teachers involved can decided what approach to take the students. However, I have added some guiding questions to help get things started.

  • Why are the future dreams of students from various culture and countries the same/different?
  • What are the cultural differences?How is English spoken differently in countries outside of the USA?
  • What does school look like in different countries?
  • How is the makeup of society - homogenous society vs. multi-cultural society, individual focused vs. community based, etc.?
  • What is the perception of the country and what is the reality?
  • What can we learn from another country to make our society better?
  • What is important(goals, expectations) to the society and drives the dreams of students?


 I am currently working a new wiki/website for the project instead of having it combined with all the other online projects that my students do. I would like for this project to be large enough that it deserves a site of its own. As the new school year starts I plan to unravel round two of this project.


Lastly, the video aspect of the project became a very useful tool. It allowed students to really grasp the culture of the other countries. I am going to focus on this aspect more in addition to Skype and meeting in real time.


For a test run, this project worked well, but it has room for more improvements.

2 comments:

Phoenix said...

Think you have made your project much stronger with the new guiding questions. It was interesting to review your presentation in June while getting prepared ourselves, and then to read this. Keep us in mind when looking for schools to connect with.

Julie Lindsay said...

Using Twitter for communication and connection this project is interesting. I agree, this project deserves its own wiki.