Global Cooperation

The Global Schoolhouse is a tool that helps teachers find collaborative learning partners and appropriate projects. There are learning projects for every age and discipline. The site offers a project registry, videos, news and discussion lists, and online expeditions. The project registry contains more than 3,000 annotated listings – and is searchable by date, age level, geographic location, collaboration type, technology tools or keyword. I found several neat projects that I could easily implement in my classroom. One of them was called "Chatting in Spanish," where students could talk to other students around the world using tappedin.org. Another neat project was "Extra! Extra! Dare to enter the world of Dali," which had students interview famous Hispanic artists and create a newsletter with these interviews. While many of the Spanish-related projects were archived and already completed, they still can help me generate ideas for new projects, so that students can communicate with others on a global basis. After all, it would be wonderful for students to see their Spanish skills in action when being able to communicate with native speakers around the globe.
iEARN works similiarly to The Global Schoolhouse. All projects involve a final "product" or exhibition of the learning that has taken place as part of the collaboration. These have included magazines, creative writing anthologies, websites, reports to government officials, arts exhibits, performances, and many more examples of youth taking action as part of what they are learning in the classroom. Another neat feature is that you can choose any area of the world and find out how iEARN has been utilized in different countries. For example, I clicked on Latin America, and it appears that iEARN has been used in Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Chile.