Kindred/The Family Project

• Description. Participants are invited to submit stories and pictures from the oral histories of their families during the twentieth century. Students should write stories that tell of childhood experiences during the twentieth century, decade by decade. Students are invited to explain life in their country for a child during the 20s, 30s, 40s right up to the 90s. Students may collect their information by interviewing parents, grandparents, neighbors, cousins, aunts and uncles or any other person who has an interesting story to tell of life in recent times or of a bygone era. Possible project/classroom activities: Students may prepare questions to interview other people about their childhood experiences. Students may illustrate the games and traditions of children in their country. Students may read stories about life at different times during the twentieth century and make up stories or poetry that reflect the era. Students may compare their own childhood to that of their parents and their grandparents by considering the ways their food was prepared, how they attended school / church, methods of travel, games played, how often visitors arrived, the style of home, heating, music, celebrations, birthdays, gifts, life before television and video games.
• Age Levels: All
• Curriculum Area:Integrated studies, English, History, Art, Social Studies
• End product: A book will be published and a web site will be made showing the stories and pictures sent.
• Time line/Schedule: Ongoing
• URL: www.iearn.org.au/kindred/
• Contact: Judy Barr judybarr@iearn.org.au
• Level of Technology Used: E-mail, newsgroups, WWW
• Sponsoring Organization: iEARN-Australia
• Longevity: 4 years
• Language(s) of communication: English

Source:  http://www.ed.gov/Technology/guide/international/index.html

Laws of Life

• Description. An essay project in which students write about their personal values in life. The Laws of Life Project invites young people to express in their own words what they value most in life. Participants will submit essays about their laws of life in which they describe the rules, ideals, and principles by which they live, and explain the sources of their laws of life (reading, life experience, religion, culture, role models, etc.). Participants respond to each other's essays and interact with each other electronically. They will also be able to report on any dialogue or events that occur in their learning communities as they participate in the Laws of Life Project, and are encouraged to use what they learned about values to initiate change within the community through action projects. A teacher's guide is also available in the project languages from iEARN. Possible project/classroom activities: Writing essays about one's laws of life, Providing respectful yet open feedback on another participant's essay, Responding to feedback that one's essay generates, Reporting on any discussions that arise in one's classroom or group from writing Laws of Life essays.
• Age Level: 9 - 21 years old 
• Curriculum area: values education, language arts 
• End product: Multi-lingual essay booklets is prepared and distributed to participants,media, and iEARN Coordinators throughout the world. 
• Time line/Schedule: October 1, 2000- May 15, 2001 (ongoing each year) 
• URL: http://www.iearn.org/projects/lawsoflife.html 
• Contact: Sarah Lucas lawsoflife@us.iearn.org 
• Level of Technology Used: E-mail, newsgroups, WWW forums 
• Supporting Organization: iEARN-USA 
• Longevity: 3 years 
• Language(s) of communication: English, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, French, any other 

Source:  http://www.ed.gov/Technology/guide/international/index.html

Learning Circles

• Description: Learning Circles are highly interactive, project-based partnerships among a small number of schools located throughout the world. Each session is 14 weeks. To join a Learning Circle, you must be a member of iEARN and complete a Learning Circle placement form two weeks before the beginning of the session. There are three general Learning Circle themes by which classrooms are grouped. Two are listed here in the Language Arts section, while the third, Places and Perspectives can found in the Social Studies section of the guide. 
• Computer Chronicles - This theme promotes writing across the curriculum. Interaction online revolves around producing a newspaper called The Computer Chronicles. Each class has the opportunity to sponsor one or more sections of the newspaper as their Learning Circle project. They solicit articles from their partner classes and edit them to create one section of the newspaper. This section is combined with the other sections sponsored by circles partners to form the completed newspaper, the Circle publication. 
• MindWorks - Mind Works is an writing theme designed to enhance creative and expository writing as well as develop different forms of self-expression. The goal is to help student learn how to communication their thoughts and feelings in writing, then share and compare them with other students from distant places. The Circle publication for Mind Works is a literary magazine that might be called Creative Minds, Mind Works or a name selected by the group. The sponsored projects could be a specific form of writing such as: personal narratives, place poetry, city dialogues, school fables, local myths or personifications of local products. Or students can select a topic to sponsor and request different forms of expression on subjects like the family, jobs, schools or cities. 
• Age Level: All. Each Learning Circle Theme is divided into different age levels, Primary, Middle, and High School 
• End Product(s) for Students: Publications, and in some cases WWW pages 
• Timeline/Schedule: Session 1 (Sep. to Jan.) Session 2 (Feb. to May) 
• URL: Computer Chronicles http://www.iearn.org/circles/lcguide/cc/cc.html, Mind Works http://www.iearn.org/circles/lcguide/mw/mw.html 
• Level of Technology Used: E-mail, WWW forums 
• Contact: Margaret Riel, USA mriel@uci.edu 
• Supporting Organization: iEARN 
• Language(s) of Communication: English, Spanish. 
• Longevity: 13 years 

Source:  http://www.ed.gov/Technology/guide/international/index.html

• Description. Lewin is an anthology of student writing. Writing can be in any format and on any topic. A publication is produced of student writing. It is distributed to all contributing schools. The project is being coordinated and published by a group of students and teachers in Australia and Pakistan. "Lewin" means "messenger" in an aboriginal language. 
• Age/level: 5 - 18 years old
• Curriculum area: Writing
• End Product for Students:Publication of "Lewin"
• Timeline/Schedule: Contributions to the anthology can be made from September June. Lewin is published in September
• URL: http://www.iearn.org.au/lewin
• Contact: Virginia King virgina@iearn.org.au, Bob Carter bob@iearn.org.au, or Farah Kamal smssec@aol.net.pk
• Level of Technology Used: E-mail, WWW forums, newsgroups
• Supporting Organization: iEARN-Australia

Source:  http://www.ed.gov/Technology/guide/international/index.html

Myths and Legends

• Description. Myths in your country and what they signify. What are the Myths in your school, family and your country as a whole? How are these Myths in your culture relevant in our contemporary world?
• Age/level: 8-18 years old
• Timetable/Schedule: November 2000-November 2001
• URL: http://www.flameghana.org/ictprojects/folktalevalue/folktales.html
• End Products for students: Posters, e-mails, booklet, websites, etc
• Curriculum area: Language Arts, Social Studies
• Contacts: Eric Sakyi Ofori eofori@chemu.worldgh.net or Hanson Okoe Burgesson oburgesson@chemu.worldgh.net
• Level of Technology used: e-mail, WWW forums, newsgroups
• Project language(s):English
• Supporting Organization: iEARN-Ghana

Source:  http://www.ed.gov/Technology/guide/international/index.html

Who-Am-I?

• Description: An educational program is a means for kids and youth to get friends in other countries. This eight-month, multi-lingual program assists by guiding them to knowledge about themselves, their place, rights, friends, families, roots, and by bringing them in contact with youth around the world. Runs in parallel in many languages. To teachers, Who-Am-I? is a means to classroom instruction within their curriculum: writing, research, social studies, history, geography, foreign languages, economics, mathematics, science, the arts, current awareness, as well as personal development, Internet networking skills, information and communications technology skills. It is also a means to networking and cooperation with other teachers throughout the world.
• Age Level: 5-19 years old
• End Product(s) for students: WWW pages
• Timeline/Schedule: September-May for schools in the northern hemisphere, and from March-November for the southern hemisphere
• URL: http://www.kidlink.org/kie/nls/abstract.html
• Level of Technology Used: E-mail, WWW forums, WWW Chats
• Contact: Esperanza Sepulveda, Puerto Rico response@listserv.nodak.edu
• Supporting Organization: Kidlink
• Language(s) of communication: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Catalan, Chinese, Danish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Saami
• Longevity: 10 years

Source:  http://www.ed.gov/Technology/guide/international/index.html

• Description. Classes will collaborate with 2 other classes to write the scripts of three mystery plays. Each play will consist of (3) acts with one act written by each of the classes in the script circle. Each class will write the script for the first act of the play. They will pass the script to the next group and receive Act I from another group. They will then write Act II and pass the script to the next group in the circle. This sequence will continue until each group has written three acts. When the originating group receives their completed play, they will develop the technical lists and mail the completed play to everyone in the circle. Supporting materials and activities will be posted on the project website.
• Age Level: grades 5-8, 9-12
• End Product(s) for Students: Collaboratively written play.
• Timeline/Schedule: ongoing, students are involved for 6 weeks.
• URL: http://home.talkcity.com/academydr/nicknacks/Play.html, http://www.ameritech.net/users/jgfairman/playwrit.html
• Contact: Jonathan Fairman, jgfairman@yahoo.com or jgfairman@ameritech.net
• Level of Technology Used:  WWW, e-mail
• Supporting Organization:  NickNacks, Cleveland Municipal School District
• Longevity: Project has been run for two years over the last 4.
• Language(s) of Communication: English

Source:  http://www.ed.gov/Technology/guide/international/index.html