International Project-Based Learning Opportunities
Online resources for global education curriculum and for connecting classrooms around the world through projects.
Note: descriptions for online resources were excerpted directly from program websites. A huge thanks to The World Affairs Council of Seattle for collecting many of these resources.
Note: descriptions for online resources were excerpted directly from program websites. A huge thanks to The World Affairs Council of Seattle for collecting many of these resources.
Noah Zeichner has co-developed two large scale global projects at Chief Sealth High School. See the WEST and World Water Week subpages for details.
Asia Society Curriculum Resources
Asia Society is the leading educational organization dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among peoples, leaders and institutions of Asia and the United States in a global context.
Connect All Schools
Visit www.ConnectAllSchools.org to browse the stories posted by educators about how they have globalized their classrooms. Search by country or by locations in the US. Add your own story with text and pictures. Be inspired to help connect every school in the US with the world by 2016!
Edutopia (PBL resources)
Long term and student centered, project learning is a rigorous hands-on approach to learning core subject matter and basic skills with meaningful activities that examine complex, real-world issues. Project learning helps students develop and retain useful, working knowledge of subjects that are often taught in isolation and abstraction.
ePals.com
EPals is a global community of collaborative learners, teachers, and academic experts in 200 countries and territories. EPals provides connections to students, classes, and school districts worldwide that are safe and secure. It is the safe and protected solution for linking classes, schools, and school districts globally via ePals SchoolMail™, ePals SchoolBlog™, and Classroom Match.
Facing the Future
Facing the Future creates tools for educators that equip and motivate students to develop critical thinking skills, build global awareness and engage in positive solutions for a sustainable future.
Flat Classroom Project
The Flat Classroom™ Project is a global collaborative project that joins together middle and high school students. This project is part of the emerging trend in internationally-aware schools to embrace a holistic and constructivist educational approach to work collaboratively with others around the world in order to create students who are competitive and globally-minded. The Project uses Web 2.0 tools to make communication and interaction between students and teachers from all participating classrooms easier.
Global Classrooms Model UN
Global Classrooms is an innovative educational program that engages middle school and high school students in an exploration of current world issues through interactive simulations and curricular materials. Global Classrooms cultivates literacy, life skills and the attitudes necessary for active citizenship.
Global Education Collaborative
The Global Education Collaborative is an online community for those interested in global education. Through multimedia forums and projects, members can join students, parents, teachers, administrators, higher education professionals, non-profit organizations, consultants and businesses to find common interests related to global education.
Global Gateway - Pulitzer Center
Building on the Pulitzer Center's mission to spread global awareness, the Global Gateway program engages the next generation on pressing systemic international issues. Global Gateway provides students with fresh information on global issues, helps them think critically about the creation and dissemination of news, and inspires them to become active consumers and producers of information.
Global Nomads Group
The Global Nomads Group’s purpose is to foster dialogue and understanding among the world's youth. GNG’s educational programs include video conferencing and videos for learning content on a variety of international issues relevant to teachers and students. All GNG programs are directly linked to school curricula, education standards and 21st century learning objectives, and are accompanied by lesson plans and training to teachers. Programs are broadcast during the school day and cover a range of topics in the curriculum, including civis, social and global studies, geography, world history, science, economics and politics.
Global Peacebuilding Center, USIP
The Global Peacebuilding Center extends USIP’s educational work to new—especially younger—audiences, introducing them to key concepts and skills in conflict management and to the challenges and importance of peacebuilding. Through multimedia exhibits, educational programs, and online resources and activities, the Global Peacebuilding Center seeks to engage the next generation of peacebuilders.
Global School Net
Global SchoolNet's mission is to support 21st century learning and improve academic performance through content driven collaboration. They engage teachers and K-12 students in meaningful project learning exchanges worldwide to develop science, math, literacy and communication skills, foster teamwork, civic responsibility and collaboration, encourage workforce preparedness and create multi-cultural understanding. They prepare youth for full participation as productive and effective citizens in an increasing global economy. Doors to Diplomacy-students produce web projects that teach others the importance of international affairs and diplomacy. There are multiple different programs available for all ages including an International Cyber Fair where youth create virtual exhibits that showcase their community and publish their findings on the web.
Global Virtual Classroom
The Global Virtual Classroom People Exchanging Perspectives Clubhouse is a multi-national, on-line cooperation activity for students from 6 to 18 years old. Using Internet technologies to communicate, participating schools can do something as simple as exchanging electronic postcards or as complex as building a website or other projects on-line together. PEP partners will be matched with the aim of achieving cultural diversity of the participants, with individual preferences for matches given consideration wherever possible. K-12 classrooms of any subject are eligible to participate in this program. Free GVC Clubhouse facilities include secure, private discussion forums and web server space if needed. The GVC Clubhouse will be open year-round for maximum flexibility.
Glogster
Glogster EDU is the leading global education platform for the creative expression of knowledge and skills in the classroom and beyond. We empower educators and students with the technology to create GLOGS - online multimedia posters - with text, photos, videos, graphics, sounds, drawings, data attachments and more.
iEARN
There are over 150 projects in iEARN all designed and facilitated by teachers and students to fit their curriculum and classroom needs and schedules. To join, participants select an online project and look at how they can integrate it into their classroom. With the project selected teachers and students enter online forum spaces to meet one another and get involved in ongoing projects with classrooms around the world.
Kidlink
The Kidlink project is run by the Kidlink Association, a newly-created non commercial, user-owned organization in Sweden that helps children understand their possibilities, set goals for life and develop life skills. It is hosted on a social network site, a unique online-environment that allows teachers and students to collaborate in projects by providing a wide range of easy-to-use features and functions.
Omprakash Classroom Portal
Our Classroom Portal helps teachers and students connect with active Omprakash Partners and Volunteers who have expressed interest in using their experiences to enrich curricula and generate resources for service and learning. Active Volunteers can serve as liaisons between classrooms and our international Partners, and ideally can visit schools in their local communities after they return from volunteering.
100 People: A World Portrait
We are traveling the globe to meet and create portraits of the 100 people representing all 7 billion of us sharing the planet. Our vision is to create documentary films, photography, and educational tools that facilitate face-to-face introductions among the people of the world in ways that cultivate respect, create dialogue, and inspire global citizenship. Using the 100 People framework, students interview and create portraits of individuals they admire most in their communities. The portraits are then exhibited at their schools and on our website, and inviting students, teachers and community members into a global conversation about their place in the world.
OneWorld Classrooms
OneWorld Classrooms is a nonprofit organization that builds bridges of learning between the classrooms of the world. OneWorld Classrooms offers free online travel and a variety of opportunities for K-12 classrooms to interact with overseas partners. Within the framework of their school curricula, OneWorld Classrooms teachers tap the uniquely connective powers of the arts and technology to provide opportunities for global exploration and cross-cultural communication in their classrooms. In doing so, they prepare their students to be active, contributing members of the global community. OneWorld Classrooms creates dynamic learning experiences through which students value themselves and their own culture, recognize the similarities between cultures that make all people a human family, and respect and appreciate the differences that make each culture unique.
Online Model UN
Online Model United Nations (O-MUN) is a not-for-profit project by the Global Leadership Center at UT Austin. It is made possible through provisions of OrgSync, Inc. and LearnCentral by Blackboard Inc. O-MUN believes in democratizing the availability of the Model United Nations experience, to engage all high school students in the collaborative process of problem solving and consensus building, and to foster leadership and positive engagement through the discussion and debate of the world’s most pressing problems. The services are and will be provided for free. Once you have signed in to O-MUN, you can register for upcoming debates.
Peace Corps Correspondance Match
(World Wise Schools)
World Wise Schools matches up Peace Corps Volunteers in the field with U.S. classroom teachers. The result? A vibrant two-year exchange of ideas, stories, pictures, and artifacts that helps U.S. students in the classroom learn about the people, geography, environment, and culture of the world from the direct experience of Volunteers living in other countries.
PenPal News
In the past year, we’ve signed up teachers in over 50 countries and connected thousands of students around the world. The curriculum for international sessions focuses on global current events about topics ranging from technology to government to the environment. International sessions start November 6.
People to People: School and Classroom Program
People to People International’s School and Classroom Program is a free service that connects a classroom in the United States to a class of similarly-aged students in another country. Teachers can request a classroom in a particular country or let PTPI assign them a partner classroom anywhere in the world. Students learn about one another by exchanging letters and/or e-mails, and can limit their interactions to a pen-pal relationship or can collaborate on a specific project.
Primary Source
Primary Source promotes history and humanities education by connecting educators to people and cultures throughout the world. In partnership with teachers, scholars, and the broader community, Primary Source provides learning opportunities and curriculum resources for K-12 educators. By introducing global content, Primary Source shapes the way teachers and students learn, so that their knowledge is deeper and their thinking is flexible and open to inquiry.
RESPECT International (Global Letter Exchange Program)
RESPECT International is a refugee education sponsorship program, and their global letter exchange program puts refugee students in written communication with non-refugee students. They seek to raise awareness of refugee issues, to build bridges between refugee and non-refugee students, and to encourage students to raise awareness of refugee issues. Your classroom will correspond with a refugee or internally displaced persons (IDP) school in another country to meet one or more of these three goals.
Rock Our World
Since 2004, Rock Our World has been connecting students and teachers to collaborate in composing original music, making movies, and meeting each other in live video chats. Using Apple’s GarageBand, each country creates a 30 second drum beat. Every Friday, that drum rotates to another country, where the bass guitar is added. It keeps getting passed along, from country to country. At each stop, one more instrument is added. When it comes back to the original country, it has touched students from all over the world! While the music is moving, students are meeting each other in live video chats to discuss various topics of curriculum.
School-to-School International
School-to-School International is a pen pal program that connects U.S. classrooms with peers in Guinea. School-to-School International also provides educational resources and support to the partner school in Guinea to provide increased learning opportunities for their students. Each student will send two letters and receive two letters in a school year.
Skype in the Classroom
Skype in the Classroom provides a directory for educators to find partners in the US or overseas for collaborative projects and exchange of ideas and best practices. Interactions are then conducted via videoconferencing (Skype). There are currently over 17,000 teachers and over 960 projects listed. Teachers create profiles and then post projects or respond to existing projects. Teacher and project directories are both searchable by age range, language, country and category.
ThinkQuest
ThinkQuest is a protected, online learning platform that enables teachers to integrate learning projects into their classroom curriculum and students to develop 21st century skills. It includes: ThinkQuest Projects (formerly Think.com): A project environment where teachers and students engage in collaborative learning; ThinkQuest Competition: A competition space where students participate in technology contests; ThinkQuest Library: The world's largest online repository of student-developed learning projects, visited by millions of web learners each month; and ThinkQuest Professional Development for educators.
Voices of Youth
Voices of Youth is a global community for young people to learn about development issues (such as Environment, Education, Human Rights, etc) and to express their opinions. Voices of Youth seeks to create a space that will help young people develop into active global citizens equipped to communicate and collaborate effectively to make a positive difference in their countries and communities. On VOY, young people will gain knowledge and awareness of the key thematic issues affecting young people around the world, enabling them to have an open and honest dialogue about the world in which they live.
World of 7 Billion
The World of 7 Billion campaign is an educational resource for both students and teachers. The United Nations announced October 31, 2011 as the "Day of 7 Billion." Now that we've reached the immense milestone of 7 billion people, it is important to understand how we got here, analyze the impact of our choices, and realize that our decisions can and will impact the future.
Asia Society Curriculum Resources
Asia Society is the leading educational organization dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among peoples, leaders and institutions of Asia and the United States in a global context.
Connect All Schools
Visit www.ConnectAllSchools.org to browse the stories posted by educators about how they have globalized their classrooms. Search by country or by locations in the US. Add your own story with text and pictures. Be inspired to help connect every school in the US with the world by 2016!
Edutopia (PBL resources)
Long term and student centered, project learning is a rigorous hands-on approach to learning core subject matter and basic skills with meaningful activities that examine complex, real-world issues. Project learning helps students develop and retain useful, working knowledge of subjects that are often taught in isolation and abstraction.
ePals.com
EPals is a global community of collaborative learners, teachers, and academic experts in 200 countries and territories. EPals provides connections to students, classes, and school districts worldwide that are safe and secure. It is the safe and protected solution for linking classes, schools, and school districts globally via ePals SchoolMail™, ePals SchoolBlog™, and Classroom Match.
Facing the Future
Facing the Future creates tools for educators that equip and motivate students to develop critical thinking skills, build global awareness and engage in positive solutions for a sustainable future.
Flat Classroom Project
The Flat Classroom™ Project is a global collaborative project that joins together middle and high school students. This project is part of the emerging trend in internationally-aware schools to embrace a holistic and constructivist educational approach to work collaboratively with others around the world in order to create students who are competitive and globally-minded. The Project uses Web 2.0 tools to make communication and interaction between students and teachers from all participating classrooms easier.
Global Classrooms Model UN
Global Classrooms is an innovative educational program that engages middle school and high school students in an exploration of current world issues through interactive simulations and curricular materials. Global Classrooms cultivates literacy, life skills and the attitudes necessary for active citizenship.
Global Education Collaborative
The Global Education Collaborative is an online community for those interested in global education. Through multimedia forums and projects, members can join students, parents, teachers, administrators, higher education professionals, non-profit organizations, consultants and businesses to find common interests related to global education.
Global Gateway - Pulitzer Center
Building on the Pulitzer Center's mission to spread global awareness, the Global Gateway program engages the next generation on pressing systemic international issues. Global Gateway provides students with fresh information on global issues, helps them think critically about the creation and dissemination of news, and inspires them to become active consumers and producers of information.
Global Nomads Group
The Global Nomads Group’s purpose is to foster dialogue and understanding among the world's youth. GNG’s educational programs include video conferencing and videos for learning content on a variety of international issues relevant to teachers and students. All GNG programs are directly linked to school curricula, education standards and 21st century learning objectives, and are accompanied by lesson plans and training to teachers. Programs are broadcast during the school day and cover a range of topics in the curriculum, including civis, social and global studies, geography, world history, science, economics and politics.
Global Peacebuilding Center, USIP
The Global Peacebuilding Center extends USIP’s educational work to new—especially younger—audiences, introducing them to key concepts and skills in conflict management and to the challenges and importance of peacebuilding. Through multimedia exhibits, educational programs, and online resources and activities, the Global Peacebuilding Center seeks to engage the next generation of peacebuilders.
Global School Net
Global SchoolNet's mission is to support 21st century learning and improve academic performance through content driven collaboration. They engage teachers and K-12 students in meaningful project learning exchanges worldwide to develop science, math, literacy and communication skills, foster teamwork, civic responsibility and collaboration, encourage workforce preparedness and create multi-cultural understanding. They prepare youth for full participation as productive and effective citizens in an increasing global economy. Doors to Diplomacy-students produce web projects that teach others the importance of international affairs and diplomacy. There are multiple different programs available for all ages including an International Cyber Fair where youth create virtual exhibits that showcase their community and publish their findings on the web.
Global Virtual Classroom
The Global Virtual Classroom People Exchanging Perspectives Clubhouse is a multi-national, on-line cooperation activity for students from 6 to 18 years old. Using Internet technologies to communicate, participating schools can do something as simple as exchanging electronic postcards or as complex as building a website or other projects on-line together. PEP partners will be matched with the aim of achieving cultural diversity of the participants, with individual preferences for matches given consideration wherever possible. K-12 classrooms of any subject are eligible to participate in this program. Free GVC Clubhouse facilities include secure, private discussion forums and web server space if needed. The GVC Clubhouse will be open year-round for maximum flexibility.
Glogster
Glogster EDU is the leading global education platform for the creative expression of knowledge and skills in the classroom and beyond. We empower educators and students with the technology to create GLOGS - online multimedia posters - with text, photos, videos, graphics, sounds, drawings, data attachments and more.
iEARN
There are over 150 projects in iEARN all designed and facilitated by teachers and students to fit their curriculum and classroom needs and schedules. To join, participants select an online project and look at how they can integrate it into their classroom. With the project selected teachers and students enter online forum spaces to meet one another and get involved in ongoing projects with classrooms around the world.
Kidlink
The Kidlink project is run by the Kidlink Association, a newly-created non commercial, user-owned organization in Sweden that helps children understand their possibilities, set goals for life and develop life skills. It is hosted on a social network site, a unique online-environment that allows teachers and students to collaborate in projects by providing a wide range of easy-to-use features and functions.
Omprakash Classroom Portal
Our Classroom Portal helps teachers and students connect with active Omprakash Partners and Volunteers who have expressed interest in using their experiences to enrich curricula and generate resources for service and learning. Active Volunteers can serve as liaisons between classrooms and our international Partners, and ideally can visit schools in their local communities after they return from volunteering.
100 People: A World Portrait
We are traveling the globe to meet and create portraits of the 100 people representing all 7 billion of us sharing the planet. Our vision is to create documentary films, photography, and educational tools that facilitate face-to-face introductions among the people of the world in ways that cultivate respect, create dialogue, and inspire global citizenship. Using the 100 People framework, students interview and create portraits of individuals they admire most in their communities. The portraits are then exhibited at their schools and on our website, and inviting students, teachers and community members into a global conversation about their place in the world.
OneWorld Classrooms
OneWorld Classrooms is a nonprofit organization that builds bridges of learning between the classrooms of the world. OneWorld Classrooms offers free online travel and a variety of opportunities for K-12 classrooms to interact with overseas partners. Within the framework of their school curricula, OneWorld Classrooms teachers tap the uniquely connective powers of the arts and technology to provide opportunities for global exploration and cross-cultural communication in their classrooms. In doing so, they prepare their students to be active, contributing members of the global community. OneWorld Classrooms creates dynamic learning experiences through which students value themselves and their own culture, recognize the similarities between cultures that make all people a human family, and respect and appreciate the differences that make each culture unique.
Online Model UN
Online Model United Nations (O-MUN) is a not-for-profit project by the Global Leadership Center at UT Austin. It is made possible through provisions of OrgSync, Inc. and LearnCentral by Blackboard Inc. O-MUN believes in democratizing the availability of the Model United Nations experience, to engage all high school students in the collaborative process of problem solving and consensus building, and to foster leadership and positive engagement through the discussion and debate of the world’s most pressing problems. The services are and will be provided for free. Once you have signed in to O-MUN, you can register for upcoming debates.
Peace Corps Correspondance Match
(World Wise Schools)
World Wise Schools matches up Peace Corps Volunteers in the field with U.S. classroom teachers. The result? A vibrant two-year exchange of ideas, stories, pictures, and artifacts that helps U.S. students in the classroom learn about the people, geography, environment, and culture of the world from the direct experience of Volunteers living in other countries.
PenPal News
In the past year, we’ve signed up teachers in over 50 countries and connected thousands of students around the world. The curriculum for international sessions focuses on global current events about topics ranging from technology to government to the environment. International sessions start November 6.
People to People: School and Classroom Program
People to People International’s School and Classroom Program is a free service that connects a classroom in the United States to a class of similarly-aged students in another country. Teachers can request a classroom in a particular country or let PTPI assign them a partner classroom anywhere in the world. Students learn about one another by exchanging letters and/or e-mails, and can limit their interactions to a pen-pal relationship or can collaborate on a specific project.
Primary Source
Primary Source promotes history and humanities education by connecting educators to people and cultures throughout the world. In partnership with teachers, scholars, and the broader community, Primary Source provides learning opportunities and curriculum resources for K-12 educators. By introducing global content, Primary Source shapes the way teachers and students learn, so that their knowledge is deeper and their thinking is flexible and open to inquiry.
RESPECT International (Global Letter Exchange Program)
RESPECT International is a refugee education sponsorship program, and their global letter exchange program puts refugee students in written communication with non-refugee students. They seek to raise awareness of refugee issues, to build bridges between refugee and non-refugee students, and to encourage students to raise awareness of refugee issues. Your classroom will correspond with a refugee or internally displaced persons (IDP) school in another country to meet one or more of these three goals.
Rock Our World
Since 2004, Rock Our World has been connecting students and teachers to collaborate in composing original music, making movies, and meeting each other in live video chats. Using Apple’s GarageBand, each country creates a 30 second drum beat. Every Friday, that drum rotates to another country, where the bass guitar is added. It keeps getting passed along, from country to country. At each stop, one more instrument is added. When it comes back to the original country, it has touched students from all over the world! While the music is moving, students are meeting each other in live video chats to discuss various topics of curriculum.
School-to-School International
School-to-School International is a pen pal program that connects U.S. classrooms with peers in Guinea. School-to-School International also provides educational resources and support to the partner school in Guinea to provide increased learning opportunities for their students. Each student will send two letters and receive two letters in a school year.
Skype in the Classroom
Skype in the Classroom provides a directory for educators to find partners in the US or overseas for collaborative projects and exchange of ideas and best practices. Interactions are then conducted via videoconferencing (Skype). There are currently over 17,000 teachers and over 960 projects listed. Teachers create profiles and then post projects or respond to existing projects. Teacher and project directories are both searchable by age range, language, country and category.
ThinkQuest
ThinkQuest is a protected, online learning platform that enables teachers to integrate learning projects into their classroom curriculum and students to develop 21st century skills. It includes: ThinkQuest Projects (formerly Think.com): A project environment where teachers and students engage in collaborative learning; ThinkQuest Competition: A competition space where students participate in technology contests; ThinkQuest Library: The world's largest online repository of student-developed learning projects, visited by millions of web learners each month; and ThinkQuest Professional Development for educators.
Voices of Youth
Voices of Youth is a global community for young people to learn about development issues (such as Environment, Education, Human Rights, etc) and to express their opinions. Voices of Youth seeks to create a space that will help young people develop into active global citizens equipped to communicate and collaborate effectively to make a positive difference in their countries and communities. On VOY, young people will gain knowledge and awareness of the key thematic issues affecting young people around the world, enabling them to have an open and honest dialogue about the world in which they live.
World of 7 Billion
The World of 7 Billion campaign is an educational resource for both students and teachers. The United Nations announced October 31, 2011 as the "Day of 7 Billion." Now that we've reached the immense milestone of 7 billion people, it is important to understand how we got here, analyze the impact of our choices, and realize that our decisions can and will impact the future.