1001 Flat World Tales: The Future

(Cross-posted from Beyond School)

I've been wishing aloud for some time that more non-Anglo countries would join the 1001 Flat World Tales project. So when Hagit from Israel (via my membership in ePals) and another teacher soon to begin work in Kazakhstan expressed interest in joining the project, you can imagine how happy that made me.

That brings the current list of participants to:

1. Korea
2. Denver
3. Honolulu
4. Hannibal, MO, USA
5. New Brunswick, Canada
6. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
7. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
8. Pennsylvania
9. Two schools in Australia
10. Shanghai, China
11. Serbia
12. Israel (fingers crossed)
13. Kazakhstan (ditto)

Imagine the '07-'08 mix for this project. We can all change partners.

But where is the Arab world? The African? The Latin American? The West European?

Patience. This project is only two and a half months old.

(And now is a good time to throw your hat in for next year. Sign up at the 1001Teachers wiki, and we'll take it from there.)

Logistics (3 Separate Spring Breaks) and Hiring Student Editors

[This is adapted from an email I sent to Chris and Michele.]

Spring Break is hitting our three schools in Denver, Honolulu, and Seoul in three different weeks. Another wrinkle in Flat World collaboration. Honolulu starts Spring Break this week.

It's not a bad thing, from a writerly view. One week off is good. But three weeks off? Uh-oh.

Anyway, concerning the current week, when Honolulu is off the radar, here's what I'm telling my kids:

Hemingway himself said that he lets drafts sit for a couple of weeks so he forgets what they look like. Then, when he re-visits them, he first pulls out his (and I quote) "Shock-proof sh#t- detector" before reading them.

Because he hasn't looked at his draft for so long, the bad parts really jump out at him. It helps him see what needs work.

So a one-week hiatus (and Michele, you and I need to coordinate our own Spring Breaks and find a way not to let this sit too long) is good.

That will give us time to breathe, figure out who should be "fired" (if necessary), and prep some exercises for word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions.

Also, I'm going to start my editors interviews. Announcing it tomorrow: prepare resume (our college counselor just hooked the freshmen up with an online resume builder, so why not hook into that), samples of blog and other writing work, and samples of good peer editing from the project.

Expectations? Maybe two conference calls: first for our student editors to plan the process; second, for them to discuss and select submissions? Both to be podcasted as digital portfolio bullets of authentic publishing experience?

How does that sound? Can we set April 1 as the deadline to have our student editors selected? April 7 as the date (roughly) of their first conference call?

One problem: Skype conferencing only allows 5 callers maximum. That means one school either only selects one editor, or else we find a creative solution to enable more (for example, two students using a line-in headphone splitter (double jack) to plug two headphones into one computer).

Thoughts?

Greenwich Time / UTC: The Next Shift?

Chris and Michele, I vote we all choose one Greenwich hour for revision deadlines and feedback deadlines. The initial confusion of learning to think in terms of a uniform "world time"--+9 for Seoul, -5 for Colorado (DST?), -8 for Hawaii--will clear itself up soon enough, and more than justify itself with the end of the deadline confusion and "false arrests" for "laziness" that I suspect we're all experiencing.

Seems like we want four days for revision, and for two of them to bet Saturday and Sunday. So I say revision should be due Greenwich Monday 0900. That makes your local deadlines in the States past Sunday midnight.

Deadlines for feedback would be three days later: GMT 0900 Thursday.

We can translate that to our kids so they all know what time that is locally.

But the point, again, is that everybody around the world knows the deadlines are at the exact same minute, regardless of local time. (In the military we called it "Zulu" time, if I recall correctly.)

Other teachers, I strongly suggest you adopt the same policy. The deadline confusion causes unnecessary confusion and frustration. Learn from our experience and save yourselves a headache!

Thoughts?

1001 Flat World Tales "Kudzu" Update: Five New Countries Enter New Workshops

(Cross-posted from Beyond School)

Ms. Cofino posted an announcement that the first middle school (11-14 year-old, for non-Yanks) 1001 Flat World Tales global wiki writing workshop opened. One interesting spin-off for me was that I simply snooped into the wiki they set up for it, and saw so many improvements to my own wiki design for our current high school wiki that I see some major thievery coming in a future overhaul. Wonderful job, Ms. Cofino. When I read and watch you, I'm "Always Learning" too.

Again, real professional development just through watching each other work. Doesn't happen very often in the physical school-building, but one click with a web 2.0 collaborative colleague takes me into her virtual classroom, where I'm watching and learning in an instant. The wows continue.

To add to that wow: Here's how the Flat World Tales kudzu has grown in the two months since its inception:

• High school first workshop cycle: Seoul, Denver, Honolulu (in week 4, third revision)
  
• High school second workshop: Australia, Serbia, Shanghai (getting underway this week)
• Middle school first workshop: Malaysia, Serbia, Canada (now open)
  
• Elementary school first workshop: USA (Missouri), Dominican Republic (now open)

That's classrooms in ten countries making connections, writing together, aiming toward authentic publication on the "blook"--all for nary a penny nor a conference, thanks to the read-write web and some tapped-in teachers. Talk about the "machine us/ing us."

Go to the 1001 Reflections collaborating teachers blog for our exploration of how a "flat world faculty" team blog might help us and future participants. It's still messy, but it's far better than the neat boxes of the past, I think.

...And Student Empathy Too

Michelle's discussions were interesting to read and prompted me to add this post about my classes' Flat World Writing session yesterday (Thursday in Honolulu). We were working on feedback only. (Okay, now several anecdotes are popping into my head).

First, two students were sitting next to each other making their way through the organization rubric and their partners' stories. The first student's partner had not posted a second draft. So I asked if she put her partner's number and name on the 4th column. She said no. I asked why. She said that if her partner looked under history, she'd know who put her name up there, and she didn't want to make trouble (sorry for unclear pronoun references). So I asked her how she'd feel if she took my class, did no work, and I still gave her a passing grade.

Second, my other student was working on giving feedback on his partner's introduction. He was typing some rather discouraging and unhelpful notes. So I asked what his partner was supposed to work on after reading the feedback. And I asked him to rephrase his feedback according to Elbowing protocol. All of sudden, very useful feedback.
My observation is that because we don't share a physical classroom, each piece of feedback, every edit to the wiki carries more connotation. And that's a great exercise for students.

Finally, what's been really fun for my students are the two warm-ups that Clay created on the 1001 Writers blog. My students loved collaborating in a lower stakes activity. I think those really help trust/relationship building.

From Student Apathy to Global Collaboration to My Initial Thoughts...

Sorry, Clay, I'm been MIA! Swamped as I know we all are...just not coping as well as you all!

Here are some crossed-blogging links:

A discussion of the brilliant Hall of Fame...or Shame: http://21cdavis.blogspot.com/2007/02/hall-of-fameor-shame.html

Questions that have rose from the global collaboration (challenge of time, relevance of this project in the midst of my Romeo and Juliet unit I had already started, and encouraging other teachers to take such risks):
http://21cdavis.blogspot.com/2007/02/1001-flat-world-tales-wiki-update.html

My initial thoughts on the 1001 Flat-World Tales Project (I have continued to be pleased, too!):
http://21cdavis.blogspot.com/2007/01/new-endeavor-across-ocean.html

This project has continued to be fascinating and it really is amazing watching the students grow through each draft. I often get students that say they like what they wrote and this forces students to really look at their writing, not only for a grade, but because they have other students, peers, reading and critiquing their writing. They do want to improve for the sake of the art of writing (not all of them, mind you, but many). Thank you, again Clay for your brilliance, your gusto, and your patience with all of us!