Global Collaboration
Global Collaboration is a great way to engage students. Some websites, such as ePals.com, make it easy for teachers to connect their students in meaningful projects with classes all over the world. ePals does the work, with complete lesson plans and objectives. All projects can be customized; you can also create your own. Check out some of the latest projects:
A Taste of Culture:
Appropriate for social studies, culinary. Students explore what local cultural foods reveal about the partner classes' location, climate, and traditions.
Invent it for Health:
Ages 8-17. Appropriate for Allied Health, Health & PE. Students invent solutions for health problems they identify in their community or around the world. This project may also be used as a sprinboard to the 2016 Spark!Lab Invent it Challenge.
Fighting Poverty:
Ages 12-16. Appropriate for Marketing, Social Studies. Classes will learn about poverty around the world as they exchange information about the causes and effects of poverty and analyze poverty data.
ePals can be searched by project:
Or by class:
Tips for Implementing Global Collaboration:
1. If you live in the U.S, you need to do extra leg work. There are many, many teachers here in the states looking to collaborate; far less in other countries. Don't post on ePals and expect to get a million replies. Spend the time reading other classes bio's and write to them. 2. If following previous advice, write a form letter and copy and paste it to as many profiles as possible. You also want to email back and forth several times before beginning just to make sure the other teacher will follow through. 3. Don't email teachers if you aren't ready to begin SOON. I know some of us (re: me) like to plan ahead, but teachers lose interest if there is too much lag time. 4. Don't discount collaborations within the states. One of my most successful collaborations was with a teacher in rural Wisconsin whose students were very different than my suburban NJ class. 5. Have very clear expectations for your students. The best collaborations have structured emails and/or contact points. What do you expect as an outcome? What standards are you trying to cover? What will the students ultimately be asked to do? 6. Try various platforms. Be open to new possibilities. Don't let failure with one project cause you to lose faith in all projects. Even my toughest students light up when they receive an email from their partners. Most of all, have fun!
Common Global Collaboration Sites (source):
ePals: Staple, great way to start. Lessons are already created and well structured, and it is well established. Most popular on ePals are the National Geographic projects, which have various themes such as weather, holidays and customs, cultural identity, and digital storytelling. Quadblogging: Awesome concept. This was one of my failures as the other teachers didn't' follow through, but I did just sign up for a second try. Basically it functions as a way to get readers for your class blog. Each week, one of the four (quad) classroom blogs is the focus. The other three classes visit the blog and comment on the posts. Skype in the Classroom:
Skype in the classroom offers lessons by experts, mystery skype, virtual field trips, and guest speakers. Teachers can elect to join a project already in progress or create their own. Great way to add videoconferencing in the classroom! iEARN: Just made the decision to sign our school up for this platform. Like ePals, it is well established and has solid projects. Looking forward to helping our teachers use this site. As a bonus it has two BlackBoard rooms for members to use
