Connections

It can be difficult to know how to find and make initial contact with others. Use these resources to find other educators, classrooms, or professionals to form impactful relationships with your students.

Join the Crowd

Become part of something larger by joining students and educators around the world during one of these special days. Find lesson ideas, dates, and activities to become part of the big day!

International Dot Day

Imagine the power and potential of millions of people around the world connecting, collaborating, creating and celebrating all that creativity inspires and invites. I hope you will join the growing global community of creativity champions using their talents, gifts and energy to move the world to a better place.

Kite Day

This great tradition came from Gujarat in India where the kite festival is called Uttararyan in Hindi. A celebration of winter coming to an end in India. Kite flying brings back lovely memories of beach holidays, days in the park and windy, sunny days. Every year students around the world share their kite flying together.

Ring of Peace

Dedicated to promoting peace on every level: personal, local, national and global. The Ring organizes creative and inspiring activities to encourage people to communicate freely with each other. On International Peace Day, 9-21, an attempt is made to create. ring of communication around the entire globe with as many participants as possible.

International Peace Day

The International Day of Peace ("Peace Day") is observed around the world each year on 21 September. Established in 1981 by unanimous United Nations resolution, Peace Day provides a globally shared date for all humanity to commit to Peace above all differences and to contribute to building a Culture of Peace

Earth Day

Environmental education empowers students around the world to solve the climate crisis and develop the skills, optimism and resolve to lead the environmental movement of tomorrow.

Check here for lessons, activities and resources.

World Smile Day

The ubiquitous smiley face icon was created by Harvey Ball in 1963. World Smile Day is celebrated to honor creating small acts of kindness across the planet.

EPals

ePals is a website that connects K-12 classrooms in more than 99 countries to share content and ideas and collaborate on projects (including pen pal exchanges). Teachers create a profile with a brief description about who they're hoping to connect with and why; for example, a third-grade class that would like to meet French-speaking students to collaborate on a global green living project. Teachers can search for partner classrooms by language, age, and keyword, and can also factor in region/country and class size. The system will also recommend classrooms. Once connected, classes can communicate through a private workspace on the site.

GridPals

Educators have been using Flipgrid to connect with classrooms around the world.

Educators have made thousands of connections, using Flipgrid to increase social learning, global empathy, and cultural understanding. You inspired us to create CoPilots so you can collaboratively manage your Group with a fellow educator. Then Bonnie McClelland stepped up, created the world's nicest signup form, and started the GridPals movement. Now, meeting and connecting with fellow educators (and their classes) is easier than ever.

Connecting Ohio Classrooms to the World

Produced by the Ohio Department of Education

Empatico

Empatico empowers teachers and students to explore the world through experiences that spark curiosity, kindness, and empathy. We combine live video with activities designed to foster meaningful connections among students ages 6-11.

This article answers questions about how to use Empatico in your classroom.

TIGd

TakingITGlobal for Educators (TIGed) empowers classrooms to understand and act collaboratively on the world's greatest challenges and foster deep learning competencies through real-world problem solving.

They support educators by utilizing technology to create transformative learning experiences for their students. Through this work, classrooms everywhere become actively engaged and connected in shaping a more inclusive, peaceful, and sustainable world.

It hosts community of globally minded educators in over 125 countries who are interested in developing and collaborating on international learning projects.

PenPal Schools

Students connect with PenPals from dozens of countries every day to read, write, and create original projects

PenPal Schools is a website that allows classrooms and students around the world to work together on collaborative projects that connect to every school subject. The site boasts that it has connected over 250,000 students in 140 countries. PenPal projects link classes with like-age peers across the globe.

The GLOBE Program

The GLOBE Program is implemented through a worldwide network of primary and secondary schools, as well as in many universities around the world. Through the use of the Internet, these schools monitor environmental changes both locally and worldwide, and document their findings in scientific research reports.

Narrative 4

Narrative 4 is a global organization driven by artists, shaped by educators and led by students. Our core methodology, the story exchange, is designed to help students understand that their voices, stories, actions and lives matter, and that they have the power to change, rebuild and revolutionize systems.

iEarn

There are over 150 projects in iEARN, all designed and facilitated by teachers and students to fit their curriculum and classroom needs and schedules. To join, participants select an online project and look at how they can integrate it into their classroom.

With the project selected teachers and students enter online forum spaces to meet one another and get involved in ongoing projects with classrooms around the world who are working on the same project.

In addition to connecting students' learning with local issues and meeting specific curriculum needs, every project proposed by teachers and students in iEARN has to answer the question, "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.

Explore how to connect your students to classroom around the world to help them become effective global collaborators.

Having a pen pal in school can break down the walls of our classrooms and connect us with others outside of our local communities. It is exciting to build relationships with new friends and hear about their lives and experiences. However, traditional mail makes it challenging to establish and sustain these connections.

Technology has made connecting and collaborating with peers around the world much more available and easier than ever. In fact, we can leverage these connections to go beyond the simple pen pal experience of students sharing their stories; we can create connections that allow students to learn with and from their peers by collaboratively engaging in relevant, authentic project-basedand inquiry-based learning. Through these experiences, students can positively impact the world around them.

Strategies for Facilitating These Global Connections

It’s not enough to simply connect your students to people beyond your classroom. For these connections to become rich and meaningful learning experiences, you will need to carefully structure the experience and consider the skills that your students will need to communicate and collaborate effectively. Explore the links below for resources to help you facilitate various forms of digital communication and collaboration that your students might use as they connect with others.

Videoconferencing: For resources and ideas on how to manage technical logistics, spark student interest, set protocols and expectations, identify roles and responsibilities, engage students during the virtual visit, and help students demonstrate and reflect on the learning that they gained from the experience, see the AVID Open Access article, Invite Virtual Guest Speakers to Engage and Inspire Students.
Blogs and Online Discussions: For specific strategies that your students can use to power up their posts and ramp up their responses, see the AVID Open Access article, Foster Substantive and Respectful Online Discussions.
Email: For tips that your students can use to effectively compose a proper email and manage emails, see the AVID Open Access article, Manage Your Communication: Emails and Notifications.
Digital Collaboration Skills and Tools: For ideas and resources to empower students as digital collaborators, to teach them digital collaboration skills, to design collaborative, tech-empowered lessons, and to choose the right digital collaboration tool to meet their learning needs, see the AVID Open Access article collection, Foster Student Collaboration in a Tech-Empowered Classroom.

Maintain and Model a Growth Mindset

Maintaining a growth mindset is always key when preparing yourself and your students for new learning experiences. For your first experience with connecting your students to other classrooms, keep it low stakes. Consider connecting to another class in your building or district, where it’s easier to meet with the other teacher to work out the logistics and address any unexpected hurdles that your students may encounter. You can use this closer-to-home experience to experiment and learn how connecting classrooms can work. Starting local is also an opportunity to scaffold the experience and build your students’ essential skills before they go global.

This is also an excellent and authentic opportunity to model that we all learn by trying. It’s good to let students know that it’s the first time you are doing this—you prepared well and are hoping for the best. Let them know that if things don’t work out as expected, you will try again using what you learned from this first experience. If things do turn out well with few or no hiccups, celebrate your success and begin making plans to broaden the connection to classrooms outside your school or district, starting within your state, the nation, and eventually globally. It is powerful to model for your students that new learning is often messy. Your vulnerability will help foster a safe learning space for your students to take the risks necessary for them to learn and grow, too.

From Avid Open Access