What is a Flat Classroom Anyway?

I have been trying to wrap my mind around what a 'flat' classroom might be for a while now.  I never did read Thomas Friedman's book, The World is Flat, either, so no help there.  Somehow the metaphor just doesn't work for me -- flat doesn't seem like a good thing.  Flat tires, flat soda, hm.

So what is a flat classroom anyway?  It's hard to get a straight answer on that.  There's a glut of information out there, and what seems to be a plethora of possibilities and guidelines for creating and maintaining a flat classroom, yet this is not a linear concept!  One has to follow many twists and turns and follow popcorn trails of wiki clues to ascertain even a good guess.  I better figure it out quick, as I have to write a flat classroom proposal for grad school in two days!

Here's what Wikipedia has to say: "Flat Classroom Project is an award winning global collaborative project for students in Grades 3 -12, inspired by Thomas Friedman's book, The World is Flat, and leverages Web 2.0 tools to foster communication and interaction as well as collaboration and creation between students and teachers from classrooms around the world."  That's one of the most succinct definitions I've read.  It seems that the projects have now evolved to include even K-3, although, I'm still not 100% sure how it works at this level.  Or any level!?

I had a Eureka! moment today, however.  Fortunately.  It came after trolling the internet and wikis for clues. I finally found a clue that meant something to me....the beginning of a journey.  Here are the words I found from a 2006 blog post on the old blog of Will Richardson, author of one of our classroom texts Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.  

"…first, we have to stop seeing our classrooms as spaces with four walls. Teachers must be willing to be connectors. And second, in the context of those connections, we can give our students real, meaningful, relevant opportunities to teach the rest of us what they know. The fact that the work of these students will be published in its many forms to the world as a whole is just so radically removed from the ways most educators still look at what happens in the classroom. If we are simply content to shuffle paper back and forth only for the sake of slapping an assessment on the work, we are doing our students a grave disservice."

Two words that really stuck out to me in this quote, and pulled together my prior knowledge to help me see what we're getting at here with flat classrooms were connector and publish.  Teachers connect.  Kids Publish.  And teach!  OK.  Getting it.