Monday, April 14, 2008

Horizon Project 2008 Launch - Come and Join Us!


Over the past few weeks about 250 students from 11 classrooms located in 6 countries around the world have been preparing for the official start to the Horizon Project 2008 this week.

This year's participating classes:
  • American School of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain - Teacher: Rosalind Greehy
  • Baccalaureate School for Global Education (BSGE) New York City, New York USA - Teacher: Madeline Brownstone and Shantanu Saha
  • The Glenbrook Academy of International Studies, Glenbrook, Illinois - Teachers: Chris Morgan and Ryan Bretag
  • Goodland High School, Goodland, Kansas USA - Teachers: Tanya Gray and Aimee Stoffel
  • Kyoto Gakuen High School, Kyoto, Japan - Teachers: Chris Flesuras and Daniel Teuber
  • Presbyterian Ladies College, Melbourne, Australia - Teacher, John Turner
  • Qatar Academy, Doha, Qatar - Teachers: Julie Lindsay and Sam Liberto
  • St. Joseph's College, Sydney. Australia - Teachers Gary Evans and Judy O'Connell
  • Vienna International School, Vienna, Austria - Teachers: Gordon Mathewman and Barbara Stefanics
  • Westwood Schools, Camilla, Georgia USA - Teacher: Vicki Davis
These eleven classrooms will merge their classrooms for a global project envisioning the future of education and society based upon the Horizon 2008 report (http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2008-Horizon-Report.pdf) created by the New Media Consortium and Educause. The classes will write a collaborative report using their wiki (http://horizonproject2008.wikispaces.com) and communicate via an educational "social" network (http://horizonproject2008.ning.com) created for this project.

This project is part of the emerging trend in internationally-aware schools to embrace a holistic and constructivist educational approach and work collaboratively with others around the world in order to create students who are competitive and globally-minded. As a sister to the Flat Classroom Project (http://flatclassroomproject.wikispaces.com) the Horizon Project also lowers or 'flattens' the classrooms walls by emphasizing connection, communication and collaboration as well as higher-order thinking skills and problem solving.

The project managers are in the process of signing up peer review classrooms, expert advisers for teams, and post-project judges. Those interested should go to the project wiki for more information at http://horizonproject2008.wikispaces.com.

What is really exciting is the enthusiasm of the students on the Ning so far and also the many educators who have come on board already to be part of this project.

However, we need more Expert Advisors, Judges and Peer reviewers! We invite you to come and join us and be part of something that is fundamentally changing the face of education. More instructions are available on the wiki pages. Come and join the Ning and leave a message for myself or co-founder Vicki Davis with a request to be included. We strongly believe in the power of the collaborative! We also know that our students perform better and are more engaged when they have support from and interaction with real people and authentic scenarios.


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