The story begins. An alien king has landed on earth and is threatening annihilation. He challenges the human race to convince him why he should save their earth. “Tell me your stories!!” The students have a challenge…to save their corner of the world from destruction by convincing the king why their community is special and worth saving. The king demands at least a thousand stories.
The 1001 Flat World Tales writing project is now accepting learning communities interested in writing with and for classes around the world. Based on the simple premise above, students will be using the power of the web to share their stories with other students from around the world and support each other through peer editing with their partner classes.
Beginning in late February, the project will last a little over a month (the schedule is flexible so teachers in the groupings can negotiate the time frames). After registering, classes will be set up in small grade-level based groups to create collaborative groups for our peer editing process. If the suggested time frame doesn’t quite work for you let us know and we’ll work with you to start a workshop a bit later (or earlier) in the year – our goal is to bring together teachers that would like to embed collaborative writing and authentic audience into their classroom experiences.
As part of the project, students will:
• experience writing for an authentic audience
• work collaboratively with peer reviewers around the world
• follow the writing process to build an understanding of your selected style of writing (while we suggest persuasive writing, teachers in a group can choose a completely different style and story set if they wish)
• utilize a wiki for writing, editing, forum discussion, and revision history
• understand how to connect information through hyperlinks
• create and embed multimedia elements to bring a story to life
The 1001 Flat World Tales project was initiated as a high school venture by Clay Burell in Korea several years ago (Clay is now in Singapore) and has been going strong ever since. It has since transitioned to the elementary level and, we are hoping, will also have an active middle school cohort this year as well (we are still working on that one, so contact us if you might be interested). No matter what grade level you’re working with, this is a great, easy to implement, collaborative writing project that students love!
We would absolutely love to have you join this project with your class! Fill out the online form and you’re in! All materials, resources, rubrics and related information can be found on the project wiki at http://es1001tales2012.wikispaces.com.
I am excited to be coordinating this project with Kim Cofino once again. Kim is an amazing international educator, highly respected and well situated in the global learning community and someone who is extremely generous with her time and talents. For more information on the project feel free to contact Kim (email) or myself (email).
Hope to see you and your students writing for their lives!