Offering the Eracism Project to Year 7s

[John Turner]

Today I offered the opportunity to a class of Year 7s to be part of the Eracism project.
An interesting learning experience for several reasons
1. Having to 'sell' the idea to students who did not know me (me being new to the school) showed how much more difficult it is when you don't have the personal 'capital' to call on. This led to:
2. The challenge of 'selling' a new project when not sure of time-line, work demand etc. Hope my efforts to appear confident didn't come over as too false
3. Even more difficult selling a challenging new concept (ie Eracism) on a short-time line to 12 year olds (although their questioning and interest were impressively mature)
In the end though
4. The project idea and central concept ellicited seven interested student volunteers (good reflection on the school culture)
5. The project also elicited one teacher idea (Thanks to Ray Jones) of teaching the whole class how to use Voicethread (none have previous experience) to explain multiple intelligences as a precursor to debating Eracism. We can then split the class into those who are continuing and those who can apply the same processes to another concept (which is also linked to global issues)
Finally
6. I continue to be amazed by the technical adaptability and ability of young students to take on new technologies, multi-task, reflect, question and listen in support of using technology effectively.
Be interesting to see how Year 8 respond early next week.
As always with Flat Classroom projects, lots to learn as we leap into the great unknown

[Julie Lindsay]

John, thanks again for taking the leap....sometimes I think it is a leap of faith as we implement a new project idea. It is very exciting to have Qatar Academy in the Eracism pilot, as this is where the idea for the project was born, at the Flat Classroom Conference 2009, and there are students at QA who were directly involved in its development.