I want to thank Julie Lindsay, Vicki Davis and others involved in the Horizon Project for once again showing us the exciting benefits of a global e-learning experience. Aren’t these students just awesome?
Like the award-winning Flat Classroom Project (2006), this new project involves students, this time 60 students in five countries, working together to look into the future of education based upon the Horizon Project Report 2007 Edition by the New Media Consortium and Educause (pdf).
The key trends identified in the Horizon Report which will be explored by the students are:
- User-Created Content
- Social Networking
- Mobile Phones
- Virtual Worlds
- New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication
- Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming
This project (using Wikispaces, Delicious, Slideshare, Ning, Twitter, Meebo, YouTube and many other online tools) is a ‘trip to the future’ where students will envision, create, and discuss what this future will look like withothers around the world. Through their work on the wiki, the students will be researching and experiencing web 2.0 enabled learning in a global community.
Student work will be assessed against three criteria related to the objectives of the Horizon Project.
- To understand, analyze and evaluate the trends highlighted in the Horizon Report 2007based on key ideas and areas of impact.
- To create a project wiki page that details this investigation and synthesis of the material.
- To use Web 2.0 tools to facilitate collaboration as well as creation.
The comprehensive rubric is worth reading. They also made use of ISTE technology standards NETS.S (revised) for ‘What students should know and be able to do to learn effectively and live productively in an increasingly digital world’.Explore the Horizon Project, the Teachers’s Page and the Students Page.
The students come from USA, Austria, Bangladesh, Australia and China.
I have been invited to join the group as a member of the Expert Review Panel, supporting and reviewing the section on Social Networking. I expect to learn a great deal from these wonderful educators!
Vicki Davis, from Camilla, Georgia, has a beaut introduction to The Horizon Project available at Ning.
Julie Lindsay, from Dhaka, Bangladesh, (who is an aussie) has put a nice introduction to the project on Youtube. Horizon Project Introduction.
Technorati Tags: horizonproject07, hz07, flatclassroom, socialnetworking
judyoconnell.com 
Thank you for pointing this out. Also, I posted my introduction over at TeacherTube also (since the Ning is private). I don’t know if it will embed here, but I’ll try!
Thank you for bringing this to everyone’s attention and for participating!
Big congratulations on this Jude. What an honour and what a stimulating and interesting time you are going to have.
I have a proposal in to do a Professional Development seminar for WA Academic libraries based around the Horizon Report. We’ll see what happens, but it will be exciting if it comes off. It is a very worthy document in itself, but also very useful to legitimize seemingly off beat ideas like gaming in education.