Getting started

What are the first steps you can take in using global learning networks to enhance your own curriculum?

• Don't wait for high levels of technology. The challenges are by and large not technical challenges but human ones. In fact, decisions to use a variety of technologies including video tapes and audio tapes give students with a wide range of literacy skills access to challenging high level content.
  
  
• Look for other classes seeking partners. If you come across pen-pal requests, write back with a proposal of a project idea.
  
  
• When establishing a class-to-class partnership, describe your ideas broadly at first as the most satisfying relationships are those in which both classes have a chance to share in the design of a joint project.
  
  
• As you consider joining projects others have created, think about how you will give them a life of their own in your class. Ask what opportunities there are for:
  1. community, family, and local investigations,
  2. critical questioning and discussions, and
  3. school or local actions in your community.
     
     The most successful projects are enhanced by, but do not depend on, receiving information from the other classes.
     
     
• Decide on an end product and a point for reflection on what's been learned. One project leads to the next as you uncover new problems to be solved and deeper levels of questions to be asked.
  
  
• Learn valuable lessons by participating first in other people's projects, or by working with a single other class to establish a long-distant, team-teaching partnership. When you feel ready to organize a group exchange, get a commitment from one or two other teachers before you begin to ensure a critical mass of participants. Then be sure to describe your project activities and project timeline in very specific terms when you send out your announcement to the wider networking community.