Flat Classrooms, Flat Libraries
Living vicariously through others, I’ve visited blogs describing the recent conferences (NECC and ALA) and the presentations at each. (Next year’s NECC conference will be in San Antonio…and I’ll definitely be there! Here’s more…. ) But this year’s NECC presentations brought me to an interesting instructional concept and wiki entitled Flat Classroom Project.
Based upon the concepts behind Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat,” the project brought two classes (which were literally a world apart) together as they examined the technologies that make the world a much smaller place. The students involved in the project examined how technology has changed the world and how productivity can be increased through the use of such technologies. (The “Flat Classroom” blog by Julie Lindsay is posted here.)
As I read through the wiki and the blogs dealing with this concept, I am reminded that I am also being introduced to new ideas that were once never even considered by school librarians. The teachers involved in this project were technology instructors with a definite interest in the use of these new types of interactive technologies, but how could librarians incorporate these ideas into their libraries? How can we create Flat Libraries….have we already created Flat Libraries without realizing it?
