Interview with SIGTel Online Learning Award First Place Winners
Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis
Julie Lindsay, of the International School in Dhaka,
Bangladesh, and Vicki Davis, of the Westwood Schools in
Camilla, GA, collaborated through wikis on their award-winning
project, "The Flat Classroom Project." This interview was conducted as a
collaborative document in Google Docs.
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Q. How did you two meet?
 Julie: We met through our online activities
with the K–12 Online conference and through blogging. We did not
meet face to face until NECC 2007 at the EduBloggerCon. |
 Vicki: I posted about a reading
assignment from the World is Flat and Julie responded to the blog. She
saw the fit. I was looking for a major project/ assessment for the first
semester computer science course to support my school's shift to project
based learning. It was a great fit. |
Q. What gave you the idea for your Flat Classroom
project?
| Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat. We were
both reading it and using it as a reference for our IT classes. I
contacted Vicki and said maybe we could get together and collaborate
seeing in Bangladesh we are on the ‘other side of the flat
world.’ |
| This project really allowed students to experience and learn
about the trends. Experience is often the best teacher and the
experience of experiencing outsourcing, ubiquitous computing, and all of
the trends of a “flattening” world did more to
teach the students than a textbook could ever have done. We thought
about studying the trends and then took it further as we
realized, “Hey, we can really connect and do this is a way
that hasn't been done a lot by merging our classrooms that are literally
on opposite sides of the earth.” |
Q. What do you think is the most important thing your
students learned during the project?
| I think my students learned greater responsibility and
appreciation of differences in approaches and attitudes. It was
difficult for them sometimes to connect and collaborate with other
students without the glue of face to face interaction. They also learned
more about Web 2.0 technologies by using them in a real-world project.
Also, they were challenged by the flat classroom ideals we instilled
where there were other teachers and students commenting on their work
and watching what they did. |
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| A message from SIGTel President, Mano
Talaiver
In an effort to implement 21st century skills, teachers are
developing new lessons and projects or modifying existing lessons and
projects to provide engaged learning experiences for students. When
teachers hear an explanation about 21st century skills from the
Partnership for 21st century skills Web site (http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/),
some point to their work using simple projects such
as “Lemonade Stand.” Although the use of Lemonade
Stand in the classroom is widespread, the question remains, “How
should a teacher implement a Lemonade Stand type project today to
meet the diverse needs and abilities of our students using technology
tools?” What is the range of 21st century skills that can be
developed using a Lemonade stand project?
Online learning projects or telecollaborative projects or global
projects or telelearning projects supported by SIGTel (SIG
Tele-learning) of ISTE have always resulted in engaged learning
experiences. Online projects develop collaboration and communication
skills, global understanding, collaborative problem solving and decision
making skills, and inventive thinking. A perfect example of this
kind of innovative thinking is the Flat Classroom Project, which earned
first place prize in the Online Learning award from SIGTel. Julie
Lindsay, International School, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Vicki Davis,
Westwood Schools, Camilla, Georgia, USA facilitated discussions among
the students on the ten technological trends from Friendman’s
book, The World is Flat. Their project in 21st century
included web 2.0 tools to develop collaboration and communication
skills.
Our students of the age of social networking are not just satisfied with
book-learning or learning for assessment. Their intellectual curiosity
to interact with global friends should be taken advantage of and we
should create online learning experiences for our students that
facilitate collaboration, communication, collaboration, and inventive
thinking. Join SIGTel not only to learn about online learning
projects but also about virtual learning on e-learning courses for
students and teachers through networking with others who have the same
passion for online learning.
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| Our experiences on the opposite sides of the earth were
amazingly consistent with students experiencing entire shifts in their
world view and understanding of the work ethic and methodologies in an
interconnected Internet-enabled world. |
Q. Which Web 2.0 tool did you find the most useful and/or
exciting in the classroom?
| The wiki has to be the most useful tool for collaboration as
it provides a platform for asynchronous as well as synchronous (by
embedding widgets on the page) connections. The most exciting is the use
of social bookmarking and sharing through RSS. |
| I agree with this totally! Additionally, it was exciting to
see that any Web 2.0 tool that our students found could be embedded in
the wiki. The wiki was a virtual scrapbook of sorts, gluing
together the many artifacts and digital creations of our students to
create a coherent message. |
Q. What was the most challenging aspect of the
project?
| The most challenging aspect was encouraging regular and
ongoing communication between all participants. This project was only
effective because there had to be daily (if not more) communication
between partners. |
| Time zones were challenging for teachers as we had to
synchronously touch base at the end and beginning of our days so that
the other classrooms would be apprised of any issues. This helped us
reach those students who were not connecting with the project and helped
us pull up to 100% participation. |
Q. What's your vision for how Online Learning will change the
way we teach?
| Online learning with Web 2.0 tools has changed the way I
teach. I expect all of my students to have a blog and to participate in
online activities via a wiki etc. I expect to hear from them via Skype
or Twitter in the evenings or during the school day. Through the
development of an online learning community I get to know my students
strengths and weaknesses in more detail and can give them more guidance
as they progress. |
| I think it is more than online learning but about online
production. Creating common curricular objectives and outcomes will
be the challenge for education in the next 20 years—correlating
standards and creating excellence in virtual classrooms as well as
integration of such projects into all aspects of education.
Collaboration will become a key component of an effective education and
could possibly upturn the traditional hierarchy of educational
institutions requiring cross-connections at the teacher level. I
like to call such teachers who are doing this
today “teacherpreneurs” because there are few
mechanisms for making these connections. Teachers need empowerment,
encouragement, and enthusiastic support from administrators as they
pursue such projects and also the expectation that perfection does not
exist in such projects. The process of such projects is the
teaching more than the output. |
Q. How did you get involved in ISTE's SIGTel?
| In 2006 my colleague John Turner from PLC, Melbourne,
Australia and I received an HM for the online project we completed
involving an online virtual debate between our classes. |
| Julie introduced me to SIGTel and meeting the incredible
visionaries who have been doing global collaboration for years made me
want to join in. These visionaries have the answers to questions
that those of us just learning how to collaborate globally need to
answer. It is vital that those participating in global collaborative
projects join SIGTel. |
Q. Do you have any future ideas for projects together?
| Yes! We are planning to run another Flat Classroom Project in
Oct/Nov this year and another Horizon Project in April next
year. |
| (Yes! We also are working to add a research component to
measure the efficacy of such projects as it relates to several of the
benefits we've seen.) |
Q. What's your favorite ed tech tool (hardware, software, web
2.0, etc)?
| There are so many good tools now! A wiki is high on the
list...Twitter is such fun...online sharing tools such as YouTube,
Slideshare.... |
| Wiki, I like to use Ning privately with my students, blogs of
all kinds, anything Web 2.0 and an open mind. I also love Skype and
the ability it has created for us to connect as well as Google docs
(which we are composing these answers in.) |
Q. Forgetting about work, if you could be anywhere in the world
right, where would you be and what would you be doing?
| Phew! Well seeing as I have been to 8 different countries in
the past 12 months...as I write this I am in Australia, my home country,
and next week I move to Qatar to for a new position. You know, it
doesn't matter where I am I enjoy it all. However, wherever I am I crave
a good, reliable Internet connection (preferably broadband and with
wireless) so that I can keep in touch with the world and keep doing what
I am doing. |
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I love teaching and so happy to be where I am and living in
this small town close to my two sisters, parents, and extended
family. Truly, family and time are the two luxuries that cannot be
bought and so I am thankful to have both of them right here. I am
also so thankful that I have am at a school with incredible
administrators who allow me to innovate and be excellent at what I
do. There are so many great teachers out there and I wish everyone
had the empowerment and trust that I have from
mine—micromanagement is a joy killer and I'm thankful to be where
I can flourish, succeed, and share with others. Truly great
administration makes good teachers better.
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To learn more about Vicki and Julie's award-winning project, please
visit: http://flatclassroomproject.wikispaces.com/
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