PES Students Make Global Connections

Occasionally, living in the least populated state in the country can be a bit isolating.  As a result students may not have as many opportunities to experience cultural diversity as their counterparts living in more urban areas.  With this in mind, I proposed participating in the Flat Classroom Project (FCP) to 5th grade teachers Laura Conwell and Debi Hutta.  They both agreed it would be a great opportunity for PES students to share their experiences and to collaborate with other students from around the world.  

Project Background
According the the Flat Classroom website, “The Flat Classroom Project was co-founded in 2006 by Vicki Davis (Westwood Schools, USA) and Julie Lindsay (now in Beijing, China).  This project uses Web 2.0 tools to support communication and interaction as well as collaboration and creation between students and teachers from classrooms around the world.  One of the main goals of the project is to 'flatten' or lower the classroom walls so that instead of each class working isolated and alone, 2 or more classes are joined virtually to become one large classroom. The project is designed to develop cultural understanding, skills with Web 2.0 and other software, experience in global collaboration and online learning, and awareness of what it means to live and work in a flat world.”

Our Experience
The FCP has a variety of projects for different age groups.  We participated in the elementary version which is called A Week in the Life.  Twenty four schools representing six different countries were involved in our cohort (you can see a list of the schools at the bottom of this webpage). 

The project began with the students creating digital group handshakes in the form of custom puzzles (here is an example) to introduce their classes and where they were from.  This was attached to a quiz in Edmodo so that that other classes could guess the class country and have introductory discussions.

The next step was to put students in groups according to the subcategories they would focus on.  These included: leisure time, clothing, language, housing, school, transportation, food, environment, and celebrations. The students then made their own individual handshakes to begin interacting in their subgroups.  Click on links below and then on the images in the Edmodo post to see some examples:

Example 1

Example 2

Over the course of a few weeks students were given time to get to know people in their groups through Edmodo discussions.  They also discussed ideas for media that they could use for their final project.  Here are some examples of their Edmodo conversations:

Before transitioning into the next phase of the project we held a full group media collection day at PES. We gave all the students cameras and had them take pictures that they could use for the final project. All images were placed in a shared Google Folder so that they were accessible to the entire group.  

The Final Project

The culminating project was for students to create a Voicethread.  A Voicethread is a collaborative tool for creating and commenting on images and short videos.  Here are a few examples.  These are still works in progress but you will get an idea of what they are.  

This one is on topic of celebrations.

This Voicethread is on the topic of leisure time.  

A Great Learning Experience

This project turned out to be a great learning experience for teachers as well as students.  As teachers we had the opportunity to use a wide variety of Web 2.0 technology tools to collaborate with students and other teachers, many of whom were located on the opposite side of the planet.  These tools included: Wikis, Ning, Edmodo, VoiceThread, LiveBinders, Google Docs, Google Groups, and GoToMeeting.

Students made connections and were engaged in the learning as they discussed culture with students from across the globe. One student was shocked that a person in China liked to ice skate just like she did.  She instantly made a connection to this young lady and they had a great discussion comparing the similarities of their cultures. The project also helped students to understand cultural differences, one student received a picture of food from China and their instant reaction was “yuck, that looks disgusting!” We were able to have conversations about cultural sensitivity and respect for differences among cultures.  Students were also amazed by the transportation students used to get to school, one students said “ I can’t imagine having to take the metro to school, I don’t even know what a metro is but it looks scary!” The Flat Classroom Project opened students’ eyes, making them more aware of different cultures and allowing them to connect and collaborate with a global community of learners.  

Transforming the Classroom

In our district administrators are constantly monitoring what is happening in classrooms.  They do this by randomly entering classrooms for around 5 minutes and then recording answers to a series of questions about what they observed. This process is called a power walkthrough (PWT)  Recently we added an additional question to the list to help collect data on the instructional result of technology use (there are 3 other technology questions on the list).  Administrators can choose from one of three answers: 

What is the result of technology use?
Replacement	No change or effect besides the introduction of technology.
Amplification	The instructional technique is the same as might be applied without technology but there is an intensification effect - more, faster, better, clearer, stronger.
Transformation	The use of technology causes a novel creation effect - a previously unattainable experience, alteration, change, restructure, reorganization occurs due to the use of technology.

Adapted from the work of Dr. Joan E. Hughes - Techedges.org  

The initial use of this framework has brought up questions related to what “transformation”  as a result of introducing technology into the classroom looks like.  When I am involved in a conversation where these questions arise, I usually share some examples from the classroom practice of elementary teacher Heather Preble.  Consider the structure of the Election Unit that her students are currently working on.

To begin the unit, Ms. Preble presented the fifth graders with a learning contract for the book they are currently reading, The Phantom Tollbooth. Students chose one of two projects to work on for the election: a comparison of the candidates or a study of the election process and a political analysis of this year's election. Once students chose a direction for their learning, Ms. Preble shared web resources with her students using a tool called Symbaloo:

Students were able to use these shared resources as a starting point to springboard their research and self-guided learning about the election process.  

Also as part of the unit, Ms. Preble created a class Twitter account.  One of her goals for the Elections Unit was to expose her students to perspectives from other students around the world.  

Here is the guide to using Twitter in the classroom that she used to get started (she found this resource by connecting with her professional learning network on Twitter). The class account was used to make a connection with a class of elementary students in Missouri who were involved in an election project called Kid Vote.  The two groups decided to share resources and engage in conversation using a web based classroom software called Edmodo.  Here is a sample of their dialogue:

They also agreed to video conference at least once a week.   Here are some highlights from their first discussion.  

This provided both classes with an audience of their peers. They used this opportunity to present the progress of their class projects and what they were learning from the process. The video sessions also provided many opportunities for dialogue, collaboration, and feedback.  Here are some examples of the Google presentations (these presentations can easily be shared online) that Ms. Preble’s class collaboratively created to share what they had learned with the Missouri class.  

Another way that Ms. Preble’s class explored various perspectives on the election was by creating a Google Form that they used to collect input from people around the country.  They sent this survey out via Twitter, Edmodo, and their own personal networks. 

A final project they did was to create avatars of the candidates using GoAnimate Election, a free app in the Edmodo App store.  They then put themselves into the persona of the candidate and created digital role plays that they shared with their peers in Missouri.   You can see some of their final products on the class Edmodo site.

I think it is obvious how this classroom has been transformed by the introduction of technology.  How differently would this unit have looked if the pool of knowledge that the students could access on the election was limited to the books, knowledge, and people that are in the building? Certainly the students would have had less opportunities to refine their conceptual understanding of the election process if they were limited to learning activities that could be done with paper and pencil. Furthermore, the opportunities for learning to collaborate and communicate with people coming from a range of different backgrounds and with different perspectives would have been nearly impossible without technology.  Also consider the numerous opportunities for developing the digital age skills that these students are going to need to be successful that occurred in this unit (I'm pretty sure the students had the opportunity for growth related to all of ISTE's standards for students ). Finally consider the student engagement in learning that is driven by this type of instruction. A parent of a student in this class recently told me "I knew my daughter was really excited about learning when she asked me to turn of the ball game so she could watch election coverage".