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?

Explore the following series of pages to learn about

• 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
• Scholastic Online Activities Center
• Interactive (Literature-based) Online Projects from eduScapes

Web Posting and Sharing

• Kids Learn: Spring into Life
• Mrs. McGowan's First Grade Projects
• Cinderella Around the World
• ThinkQuest
• Kidlink
• Clifford Capers
• Friends and Flags - all ages
• Monster Exchange
• My Hero
• KidPub
• America Writes for Kids
• GroundHog Day
• Iditarod in the Classroom

Email Projects

• ePALS Classroom Exchange
• Gaggle.Net

Threaded Discussions and Forums

• Edmodo - great tool for creating a social network for a group or class
• English Teacher Ning
• ePALS Discussion Groups
• BookSpot Book Discussion Center
• Nicenet - build your own threaded discussions

Live Chats, IM, Video

• ReadIn (Interaction between children's authors & illustrators and K-12 students)
• Author Chats 
  

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