Beyond School

Chris in Honolulu and I just finished a Skype conversation about improving the 1001 Flat World Tales flat classroom project for next year. We’re not finished with our talks, but one thing that came up, and warrants immediate public mention, is this:

Our student reflections were overwhelmingly positive (and helpfully constructive when not), so we do want to continue the project next year. And here’s the “big but”: we want to do it first semester. And we want to plan with all partnering teachers–including newcomers–for a couple of sessions before launching the project in ‘07-’08.

So consider this an invitation to any grade 9-12 (15-18 year-old) classrooms: my students in Seoul, Chris’ students in Honolulu, and Christina’s students in Kuwait are so far on the “in” list for next year. If you’d like to add your students to the list, joining Koreans, Kuwaitis, and Americans, leave a comment.

While not required, ideal candidates for next year’s workshop will be teachers who:

• are active edubloggers
• intend to assign individual student blogging in their classrooms
• able to commit to a weekly communication schedule with the project teaching team for approximately six weeks (two weeks pre-launch, four weeks during)

We’ve sketched out a rough “team planning” checklist to make next year’s road is smoother, so any newcomers will benefit from this.

If you need evidence that students will find this project engaging, here are excerpts* from the anonymous feedback my Korean students gave to this question: “What did you like best about this project?” I include every reply, so there’s no cherry-picking here. In their own words:

• I was able to learn their cultures just through their stories. I liked how I could.
• I especially liked about how we were able to define ourselves, using stories.
• We were able to have fun writing stories which we wanted to write.
• The project was kind of free in a way of writing a story of your own choice.
• What I liked best about this project is that many people around the world participated in the project.
• We got to interact with other people from different parts of the world.
• The thing that I like the best about this project was the opportunity to share ideas abroad.
• I realized that we have so many differences but we have as many similarities. I was honored and glad to view the world from a different perspective.
• We were actually able to connect with students our age in different countries. These types of projects that we’ve only been thinking about came possible in reality through this project–learning that just because we’re in different countries, that doesn’t mean we can’t do work together.
• We came to read and understand about the different writing style and culture of each other (Hawaii, Denver, and Seoul), and that we were able to interact and give feedback to their story. By doing so, we socialized and changed different opinions, which I thought was unique. It’s clearly different from projects that we do in school, because international projects allow students to interact with each other to learn things that they won’t from their fellow students at their own schools.
• Through this project I was able to learn about different cultures. Also I think I was able to provide information about my own culture to other students.
• I liked about peer works and editing processes online. Students from different regions of world got together online on internet and did project internationally. It was new and interesting to get to know each other.
• I honestly didn’t like writing this piece, but the best thing about the project I liked was that we got to know people from other countries. I could know how other people in the states wrote compared to me.
• I got to grow as a “writer” and push myself to use my creativity to write and revise my story.
• By helping each other—by having different cultures—helped me learn more. Sometimes, I didn’t know what I did bad in my writing and wanted to know how I should improve, but the only way that actually helped me improve my writing is the people from other countries that helped me learn more about my writing.
• I thought it was inventive and original. And it was good to see how other people wrote about their own cultures.
• Of course, I liked writing my own story and getting it read by people from all the world the best. It was my first time publishing my story on the internet, and I liked it.
• It made me think about writing more carefully and accurately. Also taught me the importance of editing my work and other people’s work.
• I could read various stories and it was interesting to read other students’ stories.
• I got peer help from them. Without this help my flat world story could’ve been much worse.
• The most impressive thing was to talk and reply to the foreign students. In the first semester, we had to exchange our stories or essays to one of our classmates. But then during this project, we were able to reply to the other school students, and whom we don’t know anything about.
• It was also a good idea to read the stories of students who were in different countries.
• I like how students all over the world are interacting with each other and how we can discuss things. It’s very interesting and cool at the same time. We can see how good everybody is at writing and what good writing looks like. American style writing and Korean style writing.
• My favorite part about this project was the fact that we, as writers can make up stories from our own head instead of reading a story someone else invented.
• What I like the best is that we were able to actually make up a story of our own because I thought we wouldn’t do such things like creating stories when we would come up to high school. I think it was a good experience to have. Also, by this “Peer Editing” things we did I think I was able to somehow improve my reading skills and how I should respond to another person’s story.
• The best thing I liked about this project was that we could contact other school students and read their stories. They were some great stories that I enjoyed reading. It was interesting to read students’ stories who lived in other part of the world.
• It feels good when you write good stories and others read yours and they know that you wrote the story. So it’s like if I tell you one story, then I’ll listen one story from other students. It is also like exchanging stories.
• Because we’re from different schools, and different countries, it’s exciting to hear what others have to say about your story.
• I was able to think back about the Korean culture and make story out of it. It was also interesting to see other people from the US, how they write and what they like. Most of all I enjoyed what people wrote and tasting their creativity.
• I liked the whole idea of this project because it was a certain way for us to connect to students in other countries, and realize how either far off we are behind or front we are then them
• I liked the fact that we were working with people living outside our country, the fact that we were working on a same project, with a same goal, communicating and supporting each other through internet.
• I just liked the fact that we are working on such a massive project with so many other students with diverse backgrounds.
• This project was the best at the point we can express our ideas in terms our cultures and share it with other students from around the world. It was also a good experience to see how others wrote their stories.
• I really liked how we were able to work with students our age all around the world for this writing assignment. Even though we didn’t get to meet the participating classes face to face, I feel we really got to know each other. We learned the other people’s hobbies, culture, and even their level of writing.

*a link to all Hawaii and Korea reflections to the same six questions is coming soon.

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Real quick, I just thought I’d share one of my favorite factoids: the CIA bought the rights to Orwell’s Animal Farm from his wife shortly after Orwell died. And it had a hand in adapting the novel for the animated 1953-ish film version (full details, with de-classified evidence, available maybe at the Memory Hole website).

So, pop quiz: in light of this fact, what’s interesting about the film version of the novel’s ending? Here it is:

[Update: Interesting follow-up reading at The Guardian and The Memory Hole]

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[Update: Short answer: No, Flash doesn't work either.]

This is a test of feed readers. I want to see if the Flash version of the polls I embedded in “A Quick Youth Relevance Poll: School, Church, and Unschooled Youths” will show up in Bloglines and Google Reader, since the Java versions don’t.

If you’ve already commented on the polls, please don’t vote again. (And so far, churches and unschoolers are getting more votes than schools for relevance….after two whole votes, anyway.)

Let’s see if it works:

Poll 1:

Poll 2:

Poll 3:

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Just a quick note to say that this blog has been preempted by end-of-year duties such as:

• assessing (and overseeing publication of) the 1001 Flat World Tales (more soon: student reflections from Hawaii and Seoul already done, and Denver hopefully soon to follow; after that, teacher reflections)
• assessing and polishing the Broken World wiki-textbook with my history class
• assessing and responding to the mountain of blog-posts in English and history
• prepping final exams and lessons

I imagine most teacher-bloggers have similarly pulled back from blogging in these final weeks.

And I imagine any of them who have been experimenting for the first time with integrating the read-write web in the classroom have, like me, a lot of sorting out going on in the silences.

After finals, I’ll be back with attempts to share my lessons learned. It’s been an interesting ride.

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I just saw this photo on Edge — The Third Culture, my very favorite science and culture online magazine. The Cassini satellite snapped it of Saturn. Steven Pinker gives more background.

Notice the speck of light (inset upper left) between the rings?

Say hello to home. And say a word of thanks to hard science for Revealing to us its Wonders.

Just had to share the most sublime digital photo, and the most miraculous feat performed by man on earth, I think I’ve ever seen. I need to start supporting the scientists more.

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