New Middle School Debate Project, Eracism looking for Pilot Schools, Debate Coaches, Judges

 Oh, we're so excited about the new project, Eracism.  (www.eracismproject.org) Please take a read and sign up if you'd like to pilot a classroom or serve as an advisor, debate coach, or judge.  We appreciate Elluminate signing on as a sponsor of Flat Classroom(tm) projects because this has allowed us to keep the projects free and open to everyone AND freed us up to start new projects such as this one.  Also look for an elementary project coming early next year for science. (Send me an email if you're interested in that one also.)

At the Flat Classroom(tm) Conference in Doha, Qatar in January 2009, a visionary group of students proposed that a series of debates be held to promote awareness of racism on a global basis and how we need to work together to solve the world's problems.

This multi-national group of four students proposed their project and were promoted through an extensive voting process including a global vote on the next project to be run by the Flat Classroom(tm) project founders, Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay.

Virtual world and digital storytelling pioneer, Bernajean Porter and Peggy Sheehy, saw the proposal and believed this was an important project to pilot.  Now, these four educators are working together on a pilot project in which middle school students will use VoiceThread to debate "Differences make us stronger" from October - December 2009.  The winning two teams will complete the process by debating live in a virtual world in December 2009.

This project is being piloted as a direct result of student vision but also because of the essential need to bring back fact-based debate and dialog to the curriculum of our schools.  After the pilot is completed, organizers will propose methodologies and the results of the project shared to encourage increased adoption of this model by other schools.

Find out more about this project, the organizers, and the sponsors of this project or request more information.

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Please tweet it out - we're looking for at least 12 pilot schools and already have 6-7 who have applied. (I have my eighth grade in this project.)