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Building
Connections
A key to
successful project work is developing effective relationships
with educators around the iEARN network. Most educational systems
do not emphasize or even encourage collaborative curriculum-based
project work - even within the same school. Therefore, it is
extremely important to establish human relationships among
teachers to facilitate the difficult task of collaborating
on projects across diverse educational systems, time zones
and school year schedules, cultural differences, linguistic
obstacles, and the non-oral and non-visual learning medium
of telecommunications. iEARN places a high priority on building
these relationships - both online and during face-to-face
meetings of teachers and students.
Suggestions
for Getting Started and Participating Successfully in
iEARN
1.
Welcome Phase
Meet
others in iEARN -- we invite new members to introduce themselves
and greet new members on our forums for connecting people.
Teachers and students must be registered to enter the iEARN
forums. Teachers can register students by clicking the "Manage
Account" at the top right of http://media.iearn.org.
Two
good places to start are the following forums:
- Teachers (newsgroup: apc.iearn.teachers) -
This forum is a place for teachers to meet and talk, make
announcements and updates. It is also a place to share initial
project ideas in order to find other people who might want
to help develop a project. As part of their introduction
into iEARN, new teachers are encouraged to post a message
to introduce themselves, and describe briefly themselves
and any special interests they or their class have.
- Youth (newsgroup: apc.iearn.youth)-
In this forum, young people can meet each other, share ideas
and topics of interest, and consider ways they can work together.
Special
Language FORUMS:
All
of the iEARN forums are multilingual, though there are also
a number of special language forums for connecting people.
iEARN is also open to hosting additional language forums
as interest is expressed among iEARN participants. See the Language
Resource Page for links to the various language resources,
including online forums, available across the network.
2.
Learn about Projects
There
are several resources that will help you find out which projects
are currently taking place on iEARN and how to get started
in project work:
- Newsflashes -
Every two weeks an online newsletter is created and sent
to all iEARN participants via email. It describes new
projects and people looking for collaborators, gives
updates on continuing projects, and is a place to make
general announcements. To receive the iEARN Newsflash,
write to subscribe@us.iearn.org requesting
to be added to the newsflash distribution list. (see
a sample newsflash)
- Project
Description Booklet -
This annual publication is sent to all members of iEARN.
Up-to-date descriptions of projects can also be found
on our website: http://www.iearn.org/projects/
- Project
and Member Databases -
In iEARN's searchable project database (http://media.iearn.org/projects),
you can find out more about projects that are happening
in the iEARN community. If you do not know your password,
or have forgotten it, click
here.
3.
Become Involved in a Project
We encourage
all iEARN teachers and students to participate in existing
projects before initiating a project of their own:
- Identify
a project of interest and find out if the project is still
active using the steps listed above.
- Go to
the forum where the project is held or write to the facilitator
of the project. Read existing messages on the forum.
- Introduce
yourself, your class/school and reasons for your interest
in the particular project. Respond to recent postings/topics
on the forum.
- Remember,
all students want and need responses to their messages. We
recommend that your students post 2 responses for every new
message they post.
4.
Create a New Project
Before
starting a new project in iEARN, new classrooms are encouraged
to first get involved in existing projects. In most cases,
participants will find that the themes of their own classroom
projects relate to at least one existing project in the network.
Once you have participated, have made contacts in iEARN,
and are familiar with how the projects are conducted on the
forums, these are the suggested steps for developing your
own project:
Announce
your idea by posting it to the Teachers' Lounge .
This is to generate discussion and possible collaboration
on the actual design of the project, and to see if there
are other people interested in the topic.
Once you
find other people who are interested in joining the project,
fill out the Project Idea Template Form (see below). iEARN
Coordinators will help to find an online forum for your project
to take place in, and will indicate this on #14 of the Project
Template.
Once your
project has been assigned to a project forum, facilitators
are encouraged to start an "Updates" thread to
provide participants with updates about the project (news,
timeline modifications, etc) and an "Introductions" thread
in which new members can introduce themselves as they join
the project.
Occasionally
post responses to your topic on so that people
know whether it is ongoing or ended, whether you are still
looking for participants, etc. Project facilitators are strongly
encouraged to update their original announcement by posting
news of the project as responses to the original announcement.
Also send the updates to newsflash@us.iearn.org,
so that we can put them in the newsflash. This is especially
important if most of your project is taking place over email
and not on an online forum where it is visible to the full
iEARN community.
New
Project Template
- Name
of Project:
- Brief
one-sentence description of project:
- Full
description of project:
- Age/level
of project participants:
- Timetable/Schedule
for the project:
- Possible
project/classroom activities:
- Expected
outcomes/products:
- Project
contribution to others and the planet:
- Project
language(s):
- Curriculum
area:
- Names/email
of initial participating groups:
- Name
of facilitator(s):
- Email
of facilitator(s):
- iEARN
Forum where it will take place or is taking place (leave
blank if uncertain, and you will be assigned to a forum):
- WWW
page of project (not required):
Send by
email to projects@us.iearn.org.
Suggestions
for Posting to the Online Forums:
- Try to describe
the essence of your message in
the Subject line. And, if you are responding
to a message, do not change the Subject line.
- Try to
be as brief as possible in your message and write
the most important things in the first paragraph. You
may be writing in a language that is not the native language
of those reading your message. So, it is very helpful for
others to be able to get a sense of your message in the first
few sentences if possible. In addition, some subscribers
to the forums use dial-up access and pay for telephone time
(and sometimes for kilobytes too). For them, huge files mean
huge telephone bills. Sometimes they can not even get messages
if they are too big. In addition, don't quote the whole message
that you are responding to, quote only pieces that you comment
on. Otherwise, if several people respond to a message, and
include it and previous messages in a quote, messages become
huge.
- Limit
the number of attachments you post to the forums. They can
be too big for those who pay for dial-up access. In addition,
they most often do not translate over the many systems across
iEARN and many arrive to people as garbage. Try
to configure your mailing software so that it sends out only
plain text and no attachments of encoded word
documents and html files. (e.g. Microsoft Outlook Express
by default is set so that it sends out not only plain text,
but also an encoded word version of the same text or an html
version, that doubles the size of messages). If you want
to share with all subscribers something that is big but valuable
(a Word document, a jpeg picture etc) just send a note to
the forum and ask people if they want to get it by email,
then email it to them individually. Or place your document
on the web for everybody to see.
- Do not
post chain letters or any commercial advertisements to the
forums.
Suggestions
for Successful Project Participation:
- Try
to create a globally aware classroom/school environment. The
fact that iEARN is a known, sustainable community will
provide a very different online experience to those young
people who are used to "anonymous" correspondences on
the web. Having systems in class/school for students
to better understand the interconnectedness of the world,
will allow their online collaboration with peers globally
to take on richer meaning for them. E-mail messages come
to life through maps, and a basic understanding about
the background and culture of their online peers.
- Create
a system for peer-editing in your class. Preparation
and transmission should be seen as two different tasks.
Preparing the message, researching and creating material
to be transmitted, is a very important part of the whole
process. Students will be writing with real purpose for
a very real audience. The presence of this audience provides
an incentive for students to produce the most effective
communication possible. Consider creating a feedback
process where students have the opportunity to comment
on each others work, peer edit, and then revise accordingly.
- Communicate. Even
if you can't contribute for weeks, send a note to say so.
That way, your partners know that you are still interested
in participating.
- Ensure
language is cross cultural. How
much of what is being sent needs explanation or description
for an audience from a different culture? Slang or colloquial
language needs to be used carefully. Translating student
writing into a context that is most universally understandable
can open interesting discussions in your classroom.
- Have
fun!
Suggestions
for Successful Project Facilitation:
- Use
online forums and mailing lists instead of direct e-mail
whenever possible. This
allows participants to participate at different points
in the project, given their own particular school schedule.
Because discussions are archived on the forum, new contributors
can immediately see the discussion that has happened up
to that point, understand who is involved, and whether
the work will be of interest to them. In addition, by using
the iEARN forums, you are enabling participants to participate
by e-mail or by way of the web, on discussion boards hosted
on servers around the world, thus keeping cost to a minimum.
- Encourage
discussion and interaction among student participants. iEARN
projects are meant to be collaborative and interactive.
As a project facilitator, part of your role is to empower
students to facilitate discussion and interaction among
participants in the project. Doing so also increases the
opportunities for students to receive feedback on their
writing, so that the sole responsibility of responding
to messages does not fall on you and your students as the
project facilitators. Our goal is that every student who
posts a message will receive a response. This can be attained
if people commit to respond to 2 other messages for every
one that they post.
- Involve
participating schools and students in leadership roles. Appointing
international student editorial boards and facilitators
not only provides additional sources of feedback to contributors,
but it also helps students to see ways that they can
take leadership roles within the project. In some projects,
participants may even choose to share the role of compiling
project materials into a final publication, thus allowing
a variety of classrooms the experience of analyzing and
presenting a piece of the project's "final product."
- Update
project information periodically. Posting
periodic updates to the forum in which your project is
happening will help existing participants, and will also
insure that new participants entering the project will
not be referring to outdated information about the project.
- Participate
in another project. iEARN
is an incredibly diverse network, both in terms of the
range of people involved, but also the many various projects
happening across the network. Participating in other
iEARN projects is a great way to meet other participants,
and learn about the many different projects initiated
by teachers and students throughout the world. In this
way, your classroom truly becomes a global community
member that can draw on the breadth of the network as
your classroom develops throughout the year.
- Have
fun!
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