Workshop at 2001 iEARN conference
in South Africa. |
Student participants at the
2000 iEARN conference in China. |
Youth Summit participants at
the 2000 iEARN conference in China. |
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Building Connections
- What can I learn from others
When schools join iEARN, the network is open to all teachers and
students at a school, with resources available for finding iEARN
projects across age levels and disciplines. Participants may join
existing structured on-line projects, or work with others internationally
to create and facilitate their own projects to fit their own particular
classroom and curriculum needs.
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 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  .
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. If you have questions on how to use forums write to
support@iearn.org
Two good places to start are the following forums:
- Teachers
(newsgroup: apc.iearn.)
- 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.
Activity:
| Teacher Introductions
A good starting activity for teachers in iEARN is to write
a short letter of introduction to the iEARN Teachers Forum.
This allows teachers:
- to become familiar and comfortable with the technology
and methodology before taking it to a class
- to introduce themselves to their counterparts
- to develop partnerships with other teachers/students
and to make plans for the first student transmissions
It is a good idea to write your letter of introduction to
an existing posting on the forum. By having visited the forum
and spent some time reading other entries from other teachers,
you may also find a possible partner with whom you would like
your classroom to work. By introducing yourself in reply to
someone else's introduction, you increase the possibility
of contacts. Don't limit yourself to replying to one person
either. Post replies to a number of people. Be careful to
check the dates of the letters you are replying to, as the
person may have moved on if it is an old posting.
Once you have posted your replies, be sure to check the
forum regularly for any correspondence to you. Be sure also
to reply to new people who have posted on the forum, as you
can also develop many contacts this way and also make these
peoples' transition into the network that much more successful
and interesting. By regularly visiting the Teachers Forum,
you will soon develop contacts with whom you might later collaborate
with on a project.
If you do develop a partnership with a particular teacher
and wish to get your students exchanging introductions,
we encourage you to consider doing so by joining a common
project together. By joining in an existing, active
project community, you increase the opportunity for
interaction for both of your classrooms. There are also
some general details you and your partners may wish
to sort out before the students start transmitting messages.
These may include 1) number of students in respective
classes? 2) how the respective teachers plan to incorporate
the exchanges into their classroom activities 3) school
holiday schedules 4) how much time will be spent on
planning and preparing the first transmissions 5) who
will initiate transmission and when 6) date by when
responses will follow 7) etc. This kind of planning
can be done via email, or even on the Teachers Forum
itself, as this may draw additional partners into your
planning and activities.
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- Youth
(newsgroup: apc.iearn.)-
In this forum, young people can meet each other, share ideas
and topics of interest, and consider ways they can work
together.
Activity:
| Student Introductions
Though some teachers may prefer to have students enter directly
into an existing iEARN project, the iEARN Youth Forum is also
a great place for students to introduce themselves into the
network, and to become familiar with the technology of iEARN.
An important part of this activity is the students' preparation
of their intitial introductions/reponses. For example, before
logging on to the forum, each student might be asked to write
a 1 page introduction of themselves, including age, hobbies,
likes and dislikes, description of their city/neighborhood,
and questions they have about iEARN. It is also very important
that students respond to other students, as they too will
want responses to their own postings. |
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 available to all members of iEARN. Up-to-date descriptions
of projects can also be found on our website: http:/media.iearn.org/projects
- Project and Member Databases - In iEARN's
searchable databases, you can find out more about projects
and the people who are part of the iEARN community. You
can find these databases on the web at http://amity.iearn.org/signin.lasso.
Please update your own record! If you are a registered iEARN
participant, you can access both of these databases using
your email address as an ID, and a password. If you do not
know your password, or have forgotten it, you can enter
your e-mail address at http://amity.iearn.org/signin.lasso
and your password will automatically be sent to you. Visit
http://www.iearn.org/tutorial/database.html
for a step by-by tutorial on how to access the member database.
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 the Description of the Project.
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.
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