From a Flat Classroom to a Flat World

[Beatrice Park]

I’m back from the Flat Classroom Workshop that was in Hong Kong last week. Now it’s time to return to the endless cycle of homeworks, projects, and tests (sigh). But before that, let me tell you about Flat Classroom.

We attended helpful lectures about how to utilize web 2.0 tools–Chatzy, Ning, Wikispaces, Skype, Ustream, Creative Commons, TinyURL, etc– and how to prepare powerful presentations using multimedia.

Students and teachers were divided into teams to work on a project on the Digital Divide theme. Each team had to define the Digital Divide, create a solution to bridge the divide, and prepare a presentation. My team focused on the Digital Divide between the Analog Generation and the Digital Generation. We were truly in a “flat” classroom, since we worked with virtual participants from around the world.

To me, Flat Classroom meant more than a workshop to learn about technology. It was a life-changing experience to connect, communicate, and cooperate with people from various cultures. I interacted with people I’ve never met before, and even spoke in front of a large audience; if you know how shy I am, you will understand how meaningful it was to me.

I think that the ultimate goal of Flat Classroom wasn’t to learn about technology, or to bridge the digital divide (although those were very, VERY important objectives!)– It was to FLATTEN THE WORLD.

I believe that when we broke down the walls of the classroom, a small crack was made on the walls of the world. Starting from flattening the classroom through technology, we shall flatten the whole world step by step. I’m looking forward to the day I’ll be attending a “Flat World Conference.”

Cross-posted on my blog: http://kbeatricep11.edublogs.org

[Julie Lindsay]

Beatrice, I love your picture! Thank you also for your words of wisdom and support of what we did in Hong Kong. I have been very sad this week that it is all over...and that it happened so quickly! You are very wise to realise it is not all about the technology. I do hope we see you at a future Flat Classroom Conference!