About the Flat Stanley Project
In 1994, Dale Hubert, a Grade 3 teacher in London, Ontario, Canada, began the Flat Stanley Project. He invited other teachers to take part by hosting flat visitors and to encourage their students to write their own Flat Stanley journals. Jeff Brown, the author of the Flat Stanley book, was delighted with the Flat Stanley Project as it renewed interest in the book which resulted in a sequel almost 40 years after the original. Jeff Brown stayed with Dale when he visited Wilfrid Jury Public School in London, Ontario as a guest author and hosted Dale and his family for a wonderful two week holiday in Connecticut. Dale and Jeff remained good friends until Jeff's death in 2003.
In 2010, Darren Haas, a huge Flat Stanley advocate and applications architect, approached Dale with the idea of applying Dale's Flat Stanley concept to an app for the iPhone. Since then, Flat Stanley has traveled across the digital universe onto Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, and beyond
HOW IT WORKS
One of the many advantages of sending flat visitors is that they can visit friends by travelling in an envelope. Students' written work goes to other places by conventional mail and e-mail. Whi le it is similar to a penpal activity, it is actually much more. In a standard penpal exchange, students rarely know how to begin or what to write about, but, with a Flat Stanley or one of our oth er flat characters from the Template Gallery, it's as if the sender and the recipient have a mutual friend, and writing becomes easier and more creative.
