The two Year Three classes at Parklands will make their own cardboard ‘Stanleys,’ create a background story for him, then email him to participating schools in other countries, who will send their own flat visitors visit the Parklands classroom. When a Flat visitor arrives, the host students will treat him as a special guest by including him in school activities, excursions and show him around the school, taking photos and keeping a journal of each flat visitor’s activities to email back to the Flat visitors home, which gives the sender insight to life in another place.

This project will deepen students knowledge of Geography, English and ICT as well as build their understanding of Digital Citizenship, a system of “norms of behaviour with regard for technology use” (Ribble & Bailey, 2004 p7). The activity sequence was chosen because it provides an exciting and authentic way to engage with these curriculum areas by encouraging students to learn about locations and their features, improve their literacy skills by creating texts using software while building their general capabilities in ICT, specifically by collaborating, sharing and exchanging information about their own and others Flat Stanley’s. These activities will develop student’s knowledge of digital citizenship, as they:

• use digital communication to exchange information via email
• learn digital etiquette as they respect others by not posting information that is untrue or hurtful
• protect their digital security by not posting personal information online (Ribble & Bailey, 2004)

Book: ‘Flat Stanley’, by Jeff Brown, about a young boy named Stanley who is accidentally squashed flat by a bulletin board.The story goes on to tell about Stanley’s adventures that are made possible because he is flat.

Notebook Computers: The Year Three classes have notebook computers with individual logins for each student. The students have used their notebooks all year and are proficient using Word and PowerPoint.

 Promethean Interactive Whiteboard: a large interactive display that connects to a computer and projector. A projector projects the computer's desktop onto the board's surface where users control the computer using a pen, finger, stylus, or other device

You Tube: students will view clips http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6bkfqgsXPU&feature=related, a clip on using Gaggle.net email and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUbkLNwZmxA, a Flat Stanley song included to engage the students with the activity sequence.

Gaggle.net email:  Gaggle mail is advertised as being 'safe email for younger students' and is provided via the Web, does not require hardware or software and allows teachers to review student messages, block SPAM, automatically monitor messages, block pornographic email, block curse words and block email with outsiders. Students log in from any computer, Gaggle Email has a built in monitoring system to watch for suspicious mail; any student email that looks questionable will be sent to the teacher's ‘Blocked’ folder. The teacher has the opportunity to review the message before deleting it or allowing the message to be sent.  http://gaggle.net/learn.html 

         Note-Email allows the students to participate in the Flat Stanley project in real time, and perhaps more importantly,                negates the expense of sending numerous bulky items overseas which allows more students to participate in the project 

Google Earth: is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe. It has the capacity show 3D buildings and structures (such as bridges) almost anywhere on Earth

Digital Cameras: allow student to take photographs to enhance the flat stanley experience by providing a visual representation to illustrate their writing which can be easily inserted into Microsoft Word documents as well as emails

Scanner: scanning in images of students Flat characters allows them to be emailed to participating students in other locations