Flat Classroom Conference in Qatar
Estie Cuellar, a business economics teacher at Spring Woods High School, got excited about 21st century learning and then inspired her students. The Spring Branch Library Department will take a small amount of credit by providing Estie with the opportunity to do some innovative staff development in the summer of 2008. We conducted our version of 23 Things (Library2Play) and Estie was therefore exposed to many new ideas to change her teaching. Estie has been and will always be a dynamic teacher. Now she is so with web 2.0 tools and her students’ respect for her as an information broker in their terms.
As a result, Estie became acquainted with the Cool Cat Teacher blog and then from there got involved in the Flat Classroom Project. Nine of her students participated in the project and then 3 of those got to go to Qatar to participate in the first Flat Classroom Face to Face Conference.
Estie’s three students presented their experience in the pre-conference and conference projects to the Curriculum and Instruction Division. All the directors heard the presentation and then got to ask questions. There were some questions about the experience and the effect on the students, but most directors that could see that project based learning with collaboration was a component that they wanted added to their curriculum asked over and over in various ways, “how can we get teachers to go along with this kind of teaching?” The student s wisely said that teachers were afraid of change and afraid that they did not know the technology. A director asked how that made the students feels when a teacher did not know how to use the technology. The students said it did not matter, that it was okay for all of them (student and teacher) to learn together.
Estie and the Flat Classroom Project comes the closest to anything I have seen to demonstrating the power and success of incorporating web 2.0 and social networking tools into a learning situation that also has access to technology and infrastructure to support them.
For more exciting information about Estie’s experience, check out her class Ning and the video created by her students to summarize the experience.
February 28th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Wow! What an amazing experience for these kids! I would love to hear what they have to say upon their return. Kudos to their teacher and to the people who made this trip possible. I’m sure it was a life-changing event for them all.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
You’re right, Melanie. Participating in both the project and the conference has most definitely been a life-changing experience for us all. It was really hard not to tear-up (in awe and with pride) listening to my students at the presentation to the Curriculum and Instruction Team. Everything I wanted them to learn, they did…and more. And yes, there were times that I didn’t know a particular technology (we experienced some video ‘glitches’)–but rather than pretend I did, we all learned together.
Project-based learning has transformed completely my approach to teaching…I hope to help other teachers discover the power of integrating technology and projects to facilitate learning in a 21st century environment to our (incredibly talented) Net Generation.
March 13th, 2009 at 10:05 am
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