Net Generation Education Project: Call for Classrooms
Written by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay
http://netgened2010.flatclassroomproject.org/

Award winning author, Don Tapscott, and award winning global collaborators Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis (co founders of the Flat ClassroomTM Project) are excited to announce the 2010 NetGenEd Project, another global collaboration to envision the future of education and social action by inspiring today's students to study leading technology trends and create their vision for the future.

This is the second NetGenEd Project collaboration between the two organizations with the 2009 project announced at the Flat Classroom conference in Doha Qatar 2009. The 2009 Net Generation Education Project was the replacement for the Horizon Project and included 10 schools with more than 300 students. The application process is now open for schools who wish to participate in the project in March - May of 2010.

In this project, students will study and "mash up" the results of the 2010 Horizon Report from the New Media Consortium and Educause and Tapscott's book Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World. Students will study the current research and create wiki-reports with their student partners around the world analyzing current trends and projecting future happenings based upon this collaborative analysis. This project is managed by the students who assume roles such as project manager, assistant project manager, and editors of the various wikis.

After compiling their wiki reports based upon current research, and encouraged by "expert advisors" (subject matter experts in the industry), students will then create a video in one of two strands. Video strand I competition will be the NetGenEd Challenge where students are asked to envision the future of education based upon current global technological trends. Video Strand II Competition is the Macrowikinomics Challenge where students envision the future of global social action based upon their research in current global technological trends.  The video challenge will also be open to the public for submissions beginning March 1st.

"We are particularly excited about this year's project because we're not only asking students to envision the future of learning and the classroom but also how this media can be used to impact and improve society itself. This generation is the Net Generation and they are uniquely suited to speak for themselves in casting a vision for their own future," says project organizer, Vicki Davis.

This project is unique in that Tapscott will interact with students in forum posts throughout the project as they discuss Tapscott's research into NetGen and also current research as being compiled for Tapscott's forthcoming book (being written with Anthony Williams) MacroWikinomics. Additionally, he will keynote the project via a Youtube video released in March along with a student keynote to be recorded at the Flat ClassroomTM Mini-conference at ASB Unplugged in Mumbai, India in February.

Additionally, the Discovery Educator Network is going to host a series of webinars demonstrating how to tell a compelling digital story as well as leading a book club group for educators related to the NetGenEd project. The Flat Classroom Projects are global collaborative projects organized by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay and sponsored by Elluminate.

If you are ready to have your students collaborate globally and follow the best practices as used in the award winning Flat ClassroomTM, Horizon, and Digiteen projects fill out this form before February 12th and apply now!.

NetGenEd Application
2010 Timeline
  • 2/1- 2/12 - Application process for classrooms
  • 2/12-2/18- Selection Process (classes will be notified as soon as they are selected)
  • 2/15 - Ning, wiki, and google group are "live" by this date
  • 2/18 - Final announcements of Classrooms
  • 3/5 - Greeting from Don posted to the Ning via video
    • Weekly- discussions posted to the forum
  • 2/20-3/5 - "Handshake process" - Students join Ning - post introductions
    • 3/1 - Teams announce
  • 3/15-4/10 Research phase of project
    • 4/10 - Wikis complete
  • 4/1 - Student Keynote
  • Some time in March, there will be a live session with Don Tapscott
  • 4/10-5/8 - Movie Artifact phase of project (note that there will be some overlap between Research and Movie Artifact)
  • *Storyboarding
  • *Outsourced video requests posted to the Ning by 3/10
  • 5/10 - Final Deadline for All Movies to be posted
  • 5/10-5/20 - Post project reflections, student summits, awards
.