Where to find schools to connect with

A Russian student plays us the Spanish guitar

Below follows a list of some sites that will allow teachers and educationalists to make connections for further collaboration including videoconferencing and global projects. It has been my experience that blogging  and/or global project partners often make great videoconference partners as there is an already established element of trust and confidence in each other. The students have already got to know each other and this gives an element of richness to the learning outcomes. However, many of the schools we have videoconferenced with, were new and some of the sites that were used are listed below. There are many websites and ning groups now and an online search will produce many more results. Timezone and language differences often prove to be challenges/barriers. Read “using skype in education ” for further information on successful skype linkups.

In 2008, these were some of the sites that were used for connecting to the globe:-

Classroom2.0 – with a membership list of over 17000, this is the first recommended stop.  “Long distance collaborations” and “e-learning and online teaching” groups are already established where valuable contacts can be made. Join the groups and watch out for the updates for these groups. New or established forums often appeal for connections for global projects and videoconferencing. A valuable contact for us came from a forum on classroom2.0 which actually  put our school on Russian TV with our linkups to the Russian school!!

Projects by Jen – from Jen Wagner, USA, focusing mainly on primary aged groups

Global education ning started by Lucy Barrow, USA,  where people actively seek out partners for global projects

Flatclassrooms  commenced by Julie Lindsay (The middle East)

Beyond the Walls – a French ning started by Vincent Mouspelet  (good for secondary groups, with a strong European support base)

Onlineprojects4teachers

Global School House

Twitter – a quick tweet will often bring up some willing partners.

One of our favourite groups to collaborate with, is Collaborationnation with one of the students showing us a toy reindeer. (above)

Two new sites of interest

As I was about to publish this post, I checked out the edublogger and found that Sue Waters has added a page with a list of interested skype videoconference partners. This would be a great place to start with.

Another interesting site that has just gone online is Bringing us Together for student bloggers. (Blogging is my number one interest with web2.0)

Other sites suggested to me:-

skoolaborate

Please add a comment and tell us where you have found your global connections for projects or videoconferencing.