Tutorial Home C Making Projects 1. Design a Project 2. Advertise your Project 3. Prepare for your Project 4. Conduct your Project 5. Quickstart Projects 6. Resources Next Section Previous Section

C. Making Collaborative Learning Projects

2. Advertise Your Project: Finding Partners

Now that you have planned your project, the next step is to create a project announcement and post it where other teachers can learn about your project and contact you to join in.

This should be done four to six weeks before your project begins to ensure that people will have enough time to see and respond.

The Global Schoolhouse™ specializes in helping you find partners, and has been doing so since 1984. There is still no better format for announcing your project than the form written about in 1990 in How to Design a Successful Project. We have included that form below to help you prepare an effective announcement.

Post your first project announcement or call for collaboration at least six weeks before the starting date of your project. Post your announcement again two weeks before the starting date.

We recommend that you post your project to the Global Schoolhouse™ Projects Registry.  You can see a preview of the GSH Project Registry Data Input Form.

When you post a project to the GSH Registry you can edit and update your project announcement at any time. For instance, when you have received all of the partners you need you can edit your project announcement and change it's status to "closed" so that you won't receive further registrations.

When you post your project to the GSH Registry it will also be cross-posted to the Hilites Mailing list, so your announcement will receive widespread distribution.

Check out our Resources page for more places to publish your project announcement.

Prepare Your Announcement

Use the planning guidelines below (From Global Schoolhouse™ 1990 article "How to Design a Successful Project") to help you plan, define and promote your project. Download or print and then fill in our project template.

Project Planning Guidelines Use our project template
Title	Give your project a catchy name.
Dates	Starting and Ending Dates
Purpose	Brief summary of the purpose of your project. What will students learn? Indicate here how participating classes will benefit from their experience with you.
Subjects	List the curriculum areas which will be addressed by this project. If possible, correlate to standards and frameworks.
Participants	Ages of students desired (don't use grades because they differ among countries) Number of classrooms you want to work with Locations you wish (countries, states, regions) Special technology requirements (beyond simple Internet email) Other special requirements you may have
Summary	1-2 short paragraphs which describe the project that will catch the reader's interest
Coordinator	Your name, email, school mailing address, phone and fax numbers
Registration	Provide complete instructions for registering with you to complete this project. Require email, complete name, school address, phone and fax numbers. After you've selected participants, request their home address and phone.
You may also want to provide additional information. We recommend the following:
Required Resources	List resources participants must have to participate: Internet email, Web access, hardware, software, or access to required community resources.
Activities	Describe what students will do.  See Judy Harris Activity Structures for activity categories: Problem Solving Information Collection Interpersonal Exchanges Observation Discussion Evaluation
Timeline	Specific project steps, tasks and deadline or benchmark dates.
Complete Outline	Provide extra information relevant to project.
Examples	Include one or more examples of student products.