Home About LEARN Services and publications Contact us Help Site map Français
Learn Logo

projlrn.gifTelecollaborations: Give to Get



Even in the simplest exchange, everyone should get something in return for participating. In a true collaboration, students are both consumers and creators of information. A project should always provide some form of "payback" to contributors so they will have an incentive to collaborate with you. In a nutshell, there are 4 ways to add value and give all participants a chance to get in return for what they give.

  1. The project generates then shares new and interesting information.
    The information can be shared in several ways.
  • Create an Information Search:
    Turn your request into a challenge as was done in the project Find us!
  • Create a Database:
    Give the information a more permanent home so it can be used by participants. When the need arises, create a database as in Project Groundhog. An "Information Exchange" project can often grow into a "Database" requiring a  Web site to hold the information.


2- The project approaches traditional instructional objectives in a fresh and creative way which motivates the students or gives teachers access to good lesson plans.
  • Transform your student's work into a Game or Challenge .
    Participants will enjoy it and your students will get a real audience for their work.  The Two-Minute Mysteries is a Language Arts challenge and Earth Day Challenge is an environmental scavenger hunt.
  • Offer a Question and Answer Service
    With your students as "Experts", you can be ready to answer questions sent to you for a short period of time. See Nagano at School .
  • Impersonations give everyone a chance to view things from a persona's perspective.
    What could be easier than writing Letters to Santa or "becoming" Santa to respond to them. The concept can be stretched to historical or mythological characters as in Victorian Letters and Lives.
  • Share your expertise.
    If you are an "expert" in an area, you can generously share your methods and teaching material. This is time consuming but highly rewarding. One teacher's class had been involved in Backyard Bird Watching and another's in Acid Rain analysis for quite a while. When they called for participants to join them, they gained by gathering a wider range of data and all participants gained from an incredible infusion of teaching material (initially all sent simply by E-mail). The grade one Tooth Tally Project was created in the same way.

3- The project is valuable by the collaboration process it generates: This requires that distant classes work together to create some common product .
  • Electronic Publishing
    The original Newspaper Across the Province, was done only through E-mail. Recent projects tend to include media other than text as in the Alphabet Adventure Gallery.
  • More sophisticated is a Sequential Creation:
    The common product is produced by having each participant add to it, in sequence. It could be as simple as a "Never-ending" poem or more structured as in Writing Links .
4- The project joins people around working towards a common goal or a common understanding .

  • Tele Field Trips
    As you plan your annual field trip, invite classes to accompany you virtually. Eco Field Trip to Tadoussac shows how two, or more,  classes can gain from each other's contributions.