Online Collaborative Projects

What's it like to be an astronaut?
What was it like to live during The Great Depression?
Does water boil at the same temperature at different elevations?
Where in the world do fireflies live?

These are great questions for collaborative projects. Students are often faced with problems that are best understood by talking with others, collecting data from remote sites, or going through a series of problem solving activities. For example, many students have participated in the Journey North project to learn about migration.

Read March of the Monarchs from Edutopia to learn about the famous Monarch butterfly project. Consider ways the school librarian could help with this type of project. What kinds of library activities could be designed in assocition with this project?

Read A Special Project for a New School by Ken Royal (Technology & Learning, July 2003).

Read Science Education and Urban Youth: A Look At the JASON Project in Philadelphia by Harouna Ba and Bram Duchovnay (Technology & Learning, November 2002).

Explore the following series of pages to learn about online collaborative projects.

• Exploring Projects
• Locating Projects
• Selecting Projects
• Adapting Projects
• Creating Projects
• Creating a "Call for Participation"
• Implementing the Project
• Types of Projects
  • Ask-An-Expert Project
  • Book Review Projects
  • Contests, Fairs, and Publishing: Sharing On The Web
  • Online Annual Events
  • Face-to-Face and Virtual Author & Illustrator Visits
  • Face-to-Face and Virtual Book Clubs & Reading Groups
  • Travel Buddy Project

If you'd like to jump right in, use the following off-site resources:

Collaborative Project Directories

• CIESE
• Global Schoolhouse
• Education World: Collaborative Projects
• Canada's Schoolnet GrassRoots Projects
• Scholastic Online Activities Center
• Co-nect's Teleprojects and Activities
• Interactive (Literature-based) Online Projects from eduScapes

Web Posting and Sharing Projects

• Kids Learn: Bunny Readers, Graph Goodies, Spring into Life
• Mrs. McGowan's First Grade Projects
• Cinderella Around the World
• ThinkQuest
• CyberFair
• KidProj
• Read a Book - Write a Poem - shows simple poetry forms
• Clifford Capers
• Friends and Flags - all ages
• Monster Exchange
• My Hero
• My Town is Important
• KidPub
• Caldecott Clues
• America Writes for Kids
• GroundHog Day
• Iditarod in the Classroom

Email Projects

• ePALS Classroom Exchange
• Gaggle.Net
• ICCE (Intercultural E-Mail Classroom Connection)

Threaded Discussions and Forums

• ePALS Discussion Groups
• SparkNotes: Message Boards
• BookSpot Book Discussion Center
• Nicenet - build your own threaded discussions

Live Chats, IM, Video Conferencing

• Homework Chat Room from IDEA Place
• Classroom Conferencing from Global SchoolNet Foundation
• ReadIn (Interaction between children's authors & illustrators and K-12 students)
• Author Chats 
  

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