Some guidelines to iEARNers

Well, you have participated or facilitated an iEARN project and you feel proud of you and your studentsí achievements. Why not share your joy with your colleagues in your country and all over the world? One way to do this is to write a Case Story (Story of Success) for the iEARN website, but you also can send it to a local newspaper or professional magazine.

First of all, a Story of Your Big Success must be hmmÖ a story! It is not a report you would send to grant agencies or education boards. It is meant to be read by other teachers just like you, so that they could be inspired by what you did and, perhaps, start their own project or join an existing one, maybe even yours. While writing your story, you may or may not follow the recommendations below, but in any case, try to make your story interesting reading.

School and community

You can start with a brief introduction of your school, community, and yourself. What class do you teach? What are your students, their age and background? Maybe some school and community demographics? This part of your story can be especially valuable if there is something in your school or community that influenced the choice of your project. Thus, we have heard from a teacher who chose to facilitate an environmental iEARN project because their school was close to industrial enterprises polluting air and soil so that children would understand the importance of the issue and might change it when they grow. Anyway, it could be a good idea to say why that particular project appealed to you.

Your project

This is the main part of your story. You should describe what your project is about. What are the main activities you involved your students in? Who were your partners and how did you collaborate with them. You can mention how the project has helped you achieve curriculum standards and standards themselves. (Please, do not attach multi-page official documents, it is enough if you tell about the standards in your own words and/or provide a link.)

Speak about your studentsí response to the project work. Was it their first collaborative project? How did they feel about communicating with their peers countries away? Some studentsí quotes would fit here.

Obviously, you had some challenges while participating in the project. What were the difficulties and how did you overcome them? Did you receive assistance from principals, curriculum leaders, parents, etc? By the way, what was their attitude to the project?

Outcomes

Why do you think the project was a success? How did you assess studentsí work? Do you feel that you with your children really made the world a better place? Talk about outcomes and results, both tangible and affective. Were there any unexpected successes as a result of your involvement in iEARN? Share a few examples, web links or references.

As you would like your colleagues to follow you and venture in the world of project-based teaching with iEARN, you can serve as a first-hand resource for them. How is teaching through an iEARN project different from teaching the same subjects/topics in a traditional/regular way? Make some recommendations to your fellow teachers about online project-based learning in general or participating in your project.

Attachments

Make your story visual by adding some pictures of students and your classrooms. Try to send original pictures, not edited. Remember it is always possible to make a small-sized, low-resolution image from the big and clear one, but not visa versa. Donít forget to obtain permission from the parents and school to publish them and submit that written permission along with all pictures.

You can attach lesson plan/s and provide links to publications in the media covering the project you are talking about. Your story may be edited for clarity and size.