Repeat I-VII and facilitate workshops to involve other teachers
	Write articles and send press releases
	Facilitate a project

7 Habits of Highly Effective Project Facilitators

by Farah Kamal, iEARN Pakistan

iEARN participants from the Netherlands and the USA.

Students and teachers exchange ideas at the 2000 iEARN world conference in Beijing, China.

Facilitate a project

Once you have made contacts in iEARN and are familiar with how the projects are conducted on the forums, these are the suggested steps for developing your own project:
Announce your idea by posting it to the Teachers' Forum . This is to generate discussion and possible collaboration on the actual design of the project, and to see if there are other people interested in the topic.

Once you find other people who are interested in joining the project, fill out the Project Idea Template Form below, and email it to projects@us.iearn.org.

iEARN Coordinators will help to find an online forum for your project to take place in, and will indicate this on #14 of the Project Template. If your project will not take place on a forum, and will be a small email exchange, for example, the posting will indicate this and tell people who to contact.

Once your project has been posted in and assigned to a project forum, it should also be posted as a topic on the online forum in which it will be happening. You can do this yourself, or get help from the iEARN Coordinators at projects@us.iearn.org.

Occasionally post responses to your topic on so that people know whether it is ongoing or ended, whether you are still looking for participants, etc. Project facilitators are strongly encouraged to update their original announcement by posting news of the project as responses to the original announcement. Send the updates to newsflash@us.iearn.org as well, so that we can put them in the newsflash. This is especially important if most of your project is taking place over email and not on an online forum where it is visible to the full iEARN community.

New Project Template

1. Name of Project:
   
2. Brief one-sentence description of project:
   
3. Full description of project:
   
4. Age/level of project participants:
   
5. Timetable/Schedule for the project:
   
6. Possible project/classroom activities:
   
7. Expected outcomes/products:
   
8. Project contribution to others and the planet:
   
9. Project language(s):
   
10. Curriculum area:
    
11. Names/email of initial participating groups:
    
12. Name of facilitator(s):
    
13. Email of facilitator(s):
    
14. iEARN Forum where it will take place or is taking place (leave blank if uncertain, and you will be assigned to a forum):
    
15. WWW page of project (not required):
    Send by email to projects@us.iearn.org.

Suggestions for Successful Project Facilitation

• Emphasize the collaborative aspect of the project. Make sure that there is collaboration and interaction among participants, and that teachers do not simply develop the project with their classes and report back what they did, but that they actually work together and build Before starting a new iEARN project, participate in an existing project first. Participating in other iEARN projects is a great way to meet other participants. Once this experience is gained, facilitators are encouraged to still involve their class in other iEARN projects, just as they would like other classes to participate in project activities.on what the other classes do.
  
  
• Involve students in project planning and facilitation. iEARN project forums are intended to be used primarily for student to student interaction. Project facilitators play a key role in helping teachers plan to use the project in their classes. Educators are important for coaching and guiding students in project participation.
  
  
• What’s the project impact? In addition to meeting specific educational goals, every projects proposed by teachers and students in iEARN must answer the questions, “How will this project improve the quality of life on the planet?” This vision and purpose is the glue that holds iEARN together, enabling participants to become global citizens who make a difference by collaborating with their peers around the world.
  
  
• Use iEARN’s online forums for project discussions and exchange of student work. Because iEARN forums are archived, new participants can join more easily than in exchanges happening over private e-mail. In addition, iEARN forums are distributed via mailing lists, web-based forums, and offline newsreaders, thus keeping cost to a minimum for those with limited connectivity.
  
  
• Login to iEARN on a regular basis and stay active in the project’s online forum (at least weekly). Those listed as project facilitators are expected to monitor forum discussions, and to welcome new participants. If your class will be offline for a period of time, please post a message to the project forum to alert the team of this, and if possible designate others to assume the role of facilitation.
  
  
• Update project information periodically. Posting periodic updates to your project forum will help existing participants, and will ensure that new participants will not be referring to outdated project information. In addition, project facilitators are encouraged to share project news in the Teachers’ Forum (http://foro.iearn.org/iearnforums/teachers) and students can do the same in the Youth Forum (http://foro.iearn.org/iearnforums/youth).