Flat Classrooms

This is our second week of our first PODetc (Professional Online Development for the ed tech community) Course. The course is an introduction to the new ISTE NETS Standards for Students.

It has been so exciting to see real students enroll and participate after all of our hard work creating the course architecture, content, and getting our courses accredited. The best part has been the online discussions from teachers literally all over the world and the diverse perspectives that they have about teaching and learning in an increasingly global society.

This week we are looking deeply at globalization and how to incorporate that in the teaching and learning process. One of the assignments was to listen to a discussion between the two teachers who founded the Flat Classroom project. One of the teachers made a statement in the discussion that has really resonated with me. She said, "this project has really flattened the relationships between students and teachers". What she meant by that is that it is more peer to peer co-learners instead of the hierarchical expert disseminates information. I'm doing a lot of thinking about how I can work this into my presentation at the ACSA Leadership Summit in San Diego later this week.