I have acquired what could turn out to be a very interesting teaching activity. It seems that there is a part of the high school curriculum here in Denmark called IT in communication which is an interesting mixture of learning about good design principles, search strategies, online identity, ethics as well as a general familiarisation with online tools such as blogs and podcasts. The strategy of the Technical School is to tackle this within an overall theme which links in with the Danish and sociology subjects as well. I attended a meeting last week at which we decided that the overall theme should be climate change. Not only that but there is also an international week included in the 6 week period which starts at the end of September. My reputation travels before me and they are obviously hoping that I can inject an international angle into the module as well.
As I have been writing a VITAE-related text this week I have been browsing materials about the Flat Classroom project and it occurred to me that this would be an ideal format to follow. Therefore I shall soon be looking for a partner classroom, ideally in India, but anywhere outside Denmark would be interesting so that we can do some joint work on global climate change. I have also thought that this would be an ideal testbed for piloting the lesson plan template which is part of Module 5 in our VITAE course. The final product of the project would be a video to illustrate some aspect of climate change and I would like to try and find an angle which is directly related to the students' lives. Possible avenues inlcude The Nag which is a UK website on which people report on their sustainable activities and the website collates these together to show the cumulative benefit. A similar website is The Carbon Account also mainly for the UK. I even had the idea of seeing if we could invite the most credible climate change naysayer or rather sceptic Bjørn Lomborg to speak with the students since he is based here in Denmark. The Flat Classroom project is incredibly complicated and involves judges and evaluators and now includes up to 5 schools at a time so I would aim for a more manageable two institution link up. A big unknown in all of this is how the students will react since I have not yet met them as they will be new first year students. I can be fairly certain that it will be a mainly male group but more than that I cannot say.
I want to get started in mid-August when my colleagues are back and available for consultation. I do hope for example that they don't change the theme we have decided! But in the meantime, does anyone have any good contacts in India?
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