Project Planning

Educators in Orillas can participate by engaging in at least one of three very different types of activities:

1. The exchange of cultural packages through the postal service to help the participating classes get to know one another
   
   
2. Partner class projects involving joint investigations resulting in a single product based on contributions by both classes
   
   (Please see the section on "Sister Class Partnerships" for suggestions on creating culture packages and designing collaborative projects.)
   
   and

3. Group projects involving many teachers and their classes, which usually result in an Orillas-wide publication.
   
   (See suggestions for finding group projects below.)

In addition, teachers, parents, adult educators, professors of education, community activists, and other interested educators are invited to follow Orillas activities through our mailings. Global networking projects not only benefit students; they also provide rich professional development opportunities for educators. Orillas teacher researchers share strategies and document promising classroom practices for multilingual and intercultural learning over global learning networks and invite others to participate in the discussions.

Suggestions for finding group projects

Group projects are designed to take advantage of the rich possibilities for intercultural learning provided by an international network. A community is created of teachers interested in a single theme that deals with an issue of global interest such as the environment, human rights, or the loss of oral traditions. Group projects are particularly suited for themes that benefit from multiple perspectives on a single issue or in which collective effort can create impressive bodies of informion at can later be analyzed by students for patterns and regional differences.

A number of networks now offer to connect classrooms in different parts of the world to work on common projects. Orillas global neworking projects focus on critical pedagogy to extend this basic principle. Participants explore how global partnerships can be integrated into the curriculum within a framework of collaborative and critical inquiry and purposeful social action.

We encourage educators to participate in a group project before designing a project of their own. We have suggested several group projects in the section on "Current Group Projects."

From Cummins & Sayers (1995) Brave New Schools, St. Martin's Press