Life-Changing...

As you are aware by now (if you read my blog), this past week three of my Spring Woods High School students (Karla Nava, Steve Ramos, and Erika Bautista) attended the inaugural Flat Classroom Conference & Student Leadership Summit in Doha, Qatar. While the Conference achieved a number of objectives, one of the main goals was for international student teams to develop a Global Collaborative Project that addresses a pressing social need.

The students were placed in purely international teams; they worked with no one from their school—no one from their home country. These teams brainstormed and developed innovative projects to address needs such as AIDS awareness, discrimination/racism, education, and poverty. Then, the student teams pitched their ideas to a panel of judges (all of us educators in attendance). The top four teams are now competing via online voting. The winning project will be launched as a global collaborative project in 2009. I am proud to announce that two of our students (Karla Nava and Steve Ramos) are members of two of the top four teams.

I would like to invite all of you to vote as well. Please visit the Flat Classroom Ning to cast your vote. On the main page (in the middle section) you will see links to watch the ‘pitches’ (or commercials) the students created to sell others on their idea. In addition, there are links to visit their Wikispace so you can review their research. Once you have viewed the pitches, please cast your vote.

Once you have cast your vote, take some time to surf around the Flat Classroom Conference Ning. There you will find blog posts, videos, photos, and presentations that will give you a glimpse into just how incredible this opportunity was for our students. If you have any questions, or would like for one of these students (or me) to speak with your class, please email me to make arrangements…and please take a moment to congratulate these students on their successes in Doha.