Flat+Classroom

Flat Classroom Project: Digital Divide
The Flat Classrom began when a teacher in Bangladesh (Julie Lindsay) teamed up with a teacher in the US state of Georgia (Vicki Davis). They'd both read Friedman's, **//The World is Flat,//** and wondered how they could use this to connect their students. Several hundred high schools students later, the project continues to grow by challenging students and teachers to engage in collaborative problem solving, creative thinking, integrating technology, and global communicating (now where have I heard those terms before?). Below is my blog posting after participating this past week. Although the three teachers groups created their own proposals and product; trust me, the students products pretty much put them to shame (like that was a big surprise...). No matter; instead of exiting with heads bowed, we left inspired.

A new project for KS3-Middle School students, **//Erasism,//** is scheduled for next spring.

Flat. The dictionary definition: 1. horizontally level: a flat roof. 2. level, even, or without unevenness of surface

My experience with the Flat Classroom project has twisted that definition just a bit. Students are very uneven, rarely living without an uneven surface. Teachers are perhaps a bit more even simply by the nature of teaching and life experience, but uneven in perspectives.

The process begins with students and teachers who have just met, put rapidly into working groups. Hitting the very level ground quickly to identify backgrounds, experiences, expertise and do all those so uneven human things we do when beginning a new relationship. The concept, task and process identified, its time to dig in to flatten the digital divide.

Our teacher group saw the digital divide not as the Continental divide; more like a DNA strand with access, awareness and experience all in varying quantities. Our group's digital DNA included varied chronologies, cultural backgrounds, language, technology experience. We were not flat. Our flattening came through listening, agreeing, and sharing.

The flat classroom project is not about creating a flat sameness from the peaks of diversity. It is about recognizing diversity and weaving it into a shared vision of how a problem can be solved. It is learning what it means to be even in understanding and experience and use that to create something new and uneven.

Flat isn't flat anymore.