My Nineteenth Post – The Flat Planet Project Concludes
Posted by simonsays on June 6, 2007
Well I have been away from my blog for the past couple of weeks while I devoted my time to the Flat Planet Project that my class collaborated in with Neil’s class in London, England. In this post I will share my reflections on the project.
I first got interested in online collaborative projects and using wikis and blogs last autumn when I “attended” the K12 Online Conference. I viewed presentations on wikis by Vicki Davis and Mark Wagner, and one on collaborative learning projects by Sharon Peters. These really motivated me (along with many other presentations “there”) to explore Web 2.0 tools and to think about how I could improve my students’ classroom experience with these tools.
The thing that struck me most about the project was the level of engagement I saw. As soon as my class got into the computer lab they eagerly got to work on their task. My other grade 12 class were doing the traditional project that I have previously done with this course and they have needed the traditional reminders about not playing games etc. while in the computer lab. I am amazed by some of the things that the students have done with their project pages. One of my students said the fact that we had a global audience was motivation for her to work hard on this project. Another student’s jaw dropped when I told them that they would be partnered with a class in England for this project and she said “that is so cool.”
And now for a shameless plug. I got an email from one of the guys who runs the Wikispaces website. He said, “Your space is a great example of trends we’ve been noticing in education.” And with that he told me that the Flat Planet Project had been named the Wikispaces Space of the Month for April. There are over 25,000 education wikis on this site.
If you are interested in online collaborative projects check out this link. To see some examples of other online collaborative projects check out the Flat Classroom Project, The Horizon Project, Youth Bridges and there are many others.
Neil and I have already begun to discuss where we will go from here. We would love to include another class, or two, for another Catholic collaborative project. We would like to perhaps include a class from Australia and Africa. After all the word catholic means universal! If you are a Catholic religious education teacher (anywhere really) and would be interested in collaborating Neil and I would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment.
Flat Planet
Web 2.0
Collaborative Learning
Catholic Education
Turbo Tagger
