Know thy enemy and you may find he is your friend

I only bought Release 3.0 of Tom Friedman’s “The World Is Flat” because he mentions me and my company in this release. After all, I already have the two earlier releases of the same book. However, once I read the book, I was really glad I bought it. There are two excellent new chapters and one of the stories is a must read:

Mr. Friedman highlights the Flat Classroom Project where American and Bangadeshi 10th and 11th grade Computer Science and IT students collaborated with each other on joint projects leveraging a plethora of web-based collaboration tools. In the book, the two educators who started the project state “Students are hungering for meaningful connections with one another. They want to understand if the stereotypes portrayed by much of the mass media are true and they want to connect and decide for themselves…”

Much of mainstream media is telling 10th grade American students studying Computer Science that their jobs are being “stolen” by the developing world. It is critically important that they interact with their peers in the developing world and make up their own mind. I believe such projects are a big step in the right direction and look forward to more projects of this type. The plug from Tom Friedman doesn’t hurt this trend either.