E-mail Projects

The first thing is to engage your students in reading and writing that they will enjoy and have them do a lot of it. One way is to involve them in collaborative projects. Here are some categories and their associated Web sites to peruse:

KeyPals and Interactive E-mail Projects

Collaborative Writing Projects

Global Research Projects

Telementors and Ask-an-Expert Projects

E-mail Accounts for Students

Permission Form Examples for E-mail Projects

KeyPals and Interactive E-mail Projects

Class Connect at Gigglepotz.com*

Class-Connect is a great way for classrooms to connect with other classrooms across the world, using e-mail or 'snail mail'. Classrooms for three years now, have been using Class Connect to develop understanding of different cultures through e-mail, video-conferencing, and moderated forums. Includes free e-mail accounts for students. The site has a subscription fee.

ePALS Classroom Exchange*
www.epals.com/register*
ePALS Classroom Exchange maintains the Internet's largest community of collaborative classrooms engaged in cross-cultural exchanges, project sharing and language learning. ePALS is also the leading provider of school-safe e-mail, blogs, eMentoring and web-browsing technology for the global educational market. You can create a maximum of 35 monitored accounts using ePALS Classroom Exchange. If you require a greater number of accounts, or if you would like to be able to customize your learning environment and use e-mail outside the ePALS global network, consider ePALS SchoolMailTM.

Intercultural E-Mail Classroom Connections*
IECC is a free service to help teachers link with partners in other cultures and countries for e-mail classroom pen-pal and other project exchanges. Since its creation in 1992, IECC has distributed over 28,000 requests for e-mail partnerships.

KIDPROJ*

KIDPROJ is a part of KIDLINK*, where students through secondary school join global projects. Teachers and youth group leaders from around the world plan activities and projects for their students in KIDPROJ-COORD*, the adult discussion area of KIDPROJ. Student work is posted on the Web in Kidlink's KidSpace*.

Kidworld Keypals*
You don't need any type of e-mail program. "To write to a keypal, all you have to do is to double-click on a person's name. When you do that, a letter-form appears. You just write your letter, select 'Send', and your letter goes to the person you have chosen."

Kids Space*
Includes International Kids' Space for creative activities; Kids' Space Connection for communication activities, such as penpals; and the Guide Bear's Tour as a tool for using both sites and teaching about technology. For lower elementary students.

NFB Kids: The Prince and I*
Through interactive games and challenging activities that are fun to play and presented in a colorful and professionally designed format, children are stimulated to read, write and create art that can be shared with other children around the world. This site is designed for children in elementary school (Grades K-6).

More Than Just Key Pals*
An article that addresses tips on finding pen pals, safety issues you need to discuss with your class, and activity ideas you can do with your partner class. Highly recommended.

Collaborative Writing Projects

A Young Writers' Round Table, via the Web*

An article about how teachers are finding e-mail, weblog diaries, and public Web pages effective in providing students the opportunity to read and critique each other's work.

The Monster Exchange*
A student draws an original monster and then communicates that drawing into words using the writing process and the writing skills taught by the teacher. The student from a cooperating school (many times another country) receives the description and uses reading comprehension skills to try to redraw the original monster only from reading the description.

The Global Classroom: Pass It Along Story*
A beginning paragraph is distributed to two groups of classrooms. Each classroom is responsible for writing a paragraph of the story and then forwarding to another classroom so the next portion of the story can be written.

Interactive Story*
Los del Cuarto, the fourth grade dual language class at Phoenix Elementary, has created interactive stories in Spanish and English. They have written the beginning of stories inspired by Native American myths, and any class or group of students may add to them.

Education by Design: Storyteller*
They accept student stories, jokes, and poems. Appropriate for grade school students.

Integrating Productivity Tools in Primary and Secondary Education:
Student-Writers on the Web by Ted Nellen*
An article on how this teacher uses the Internet to stimulate student writing.

Publishing Student Work Online: Web Sites that Publish Student Work*
Links to Web sites that showcase student work.

Global Research Projects

Journey North*
Journey North is a science education program that uses the Internet to track migration and signs of spring. Students in classrooms across North America share their own observations of the changing seasons.

ExplorA-Pond*

ExplorA-Pond is an online telecommunications project that encourages worldwide, online collaboration as K-12 students study pond ecology and create a database of pond descriptions.

The GLOBE Program*

GLOBE is a worldwide hands-on, primary and secondary school-based education and science program. For Students, GLOBE provides the opportunity to learn by taking scientifically valid measurements in the fields of atmosphere, hydrology, soils, and land cover/phenology - depending upon their local curricula; reporting their data through the Internet; creating maps and graphs on the free interactive Web site to analyze data sets; and collaborating with scientists and other GLOBE students around the world.

Pathfinder Science*

Provides a home for collaborative research projects such as "Keeping An Eye on Ozone," "Lichens and SO2," "UVB and DNA,' "Monarch Watch and Monarch Wave," "Global Warming," "Winter Bird Survey," "stream monitoring," and more.

Project Atmosphere Australia Online*

Australian project that welcomes international schools to participate in a wide range of activities based on weather around the globe.

Telementors and Ask-an-Expert

International Telementor Center (Previously "HP Telementor Program")*
HP Telementor Program allows professionals worldwide to help students, through teacher-supervised projects, in the critical areas of math, science, professional communication skills, and career/education planning.

Ask An Expert Page*
Links to sites that provide experts who will answer students' questions. Categorized by subject area.

Pitsco's Ask an Expert*
Askanexpert.com connects you with hundreds of real world experts, ranging from astronauts to zookeepers.

E-mail Accounts for Students

ePALS Classroom Exchange*
www.epals.com/register*
The World's Largest K-12 Online Classroom and electronic pen pal network, connecting 1.4 million students and teachers in 19,235 registered classrooms from 108 countries. Provides free student e-mail accounts. Free service includes ePALS Webmail, Monitored e-mail, and instant language translation.

Gaggle Network*
"Kids as young as eight and as old as eighteen can use Gaggle. Gaggle mail is provided via the Web. No hardware or software is required by your school other than an Internet connection. The teacher accounts give access to the special monitoring and control sections within the Gaggle Network. You can view the contents of your students' e-mail and review any message that the students have sent or received." Gaggle has a built-in monitoring system to watch for suspicious mail. E-mail is monitored for specific inappropriate words or phrases. Any questionable e-mail will be sent to the teacher's "Blocked" folder, which can then be reviewed before deleting or sending it on.