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"The mission of ePALS Classroom Exchange is to offer safe, innovative ways for learners to make contact with other cultures. They currently connect over 4.5 million users from 191 countries, speaking 136 languages, by providing built-in Webmail language translation and safety features such as monitored e-mail and profanity filters. All of the tools and resources on the site are free to anyone with a computer, anywhere in the world. The site also offers collaborative projects that students can join, as well as tools for creating projects and contacting students in remote locations."

ePals is the social network optimized for K-12 learning. Over half a million classrooms in 200 countries and territories have joined the ePals Global Community to connect, collaborate and exchange ideas. ePals now translates in 35 languages! The benefits of the site are that the students can connect with other students and classrooms around the globe. You connect with them by the projects that you are working on in the classroom. This gives the common ground to talk about back and forth. The possible pitfalls are if you get a classroom that is not as involved as yours. It could be a let down and you may have to find another classroom that you could connect with.

This site is free and connects you with other educators seeking to connect classrooms for global projects. It has great safety features and has a variety of projects for all content areas and grade levels. You can form e-mail pen pal connections with classrooms around the world. Very cool!

20 Ideas for Engaging Projects via @edutopia http://t.co/YXTP9kdk

"If you're not yet on Twitter, read this post to find out some reasons why you should be. Confused about the Twitter language? Hopefully this brief explanation will help."

National Geographic and Annenberg are offering a week-long course on water (Oct 9-16), the first in a series of online courses that extend through CEM and beyond, with credit available from the University of San Diego. "Description: Water is an essential theme in social studies, science, and geography. Whether teaching about natural or human systems, water is part of the story. This open online course, framed around California's Education and the Environment Initiative (EEI), focuses on ocean and freshwater topics and strategies for teaching environmental topics in Grades 4-8. Resources and support are provided for how to use EEI to implement Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy."

Not sure of age appropriateness. There's so much there, you need to browse Students who may struggle with inference in literature selections in class, may learn inference instead from watching and journaling about the behavior of falcons on a web cam and later analyzing those recorded observations. As the same students compare their personal observations and inferences with those made by professional biologists, they will naturally begin to develop new skills and abilities for interpreting written materials. Website also has a large abundance of other opportunities for projects and language arts lesson ideas.

Grade/Subject: 9-12 Language Arts Description: Students will research the American Dream, what it means to different people and cultures, how it changes, and how it manifests itself in politics, religion, education or entertainment. In addition, students will define their own American Dreams and explore obstacles and adjustments they might need to make. Benefits: The student will apply pre-reading skills and comprehension strategies, while extending independent reading, and will organize and synthesize information that will be used to plan, create, organize and present an age appropriate media product. Students will also become more aware of the way culture changes across the decades. Possible Pitfalls: Finding an authentic audience could be an issue. However, some front work could solve that problem.

Curriki, the online education community, is building the first website to offer free, open-source instructional materials for K-12. We have thousands of free worksheets, lesson plans, exams, project ideas and activities for English language arts, math, science, social studies, technology integration and other subjects.

Description: "The resources in Xpeditions provide an opportunity to cross the curriculums of science, social studies, math, and language arts using National Geography Standards. At the same time students are engaged in unique and well planned inquiry, project, and problem based activities." Benefits: Just about all the work is done for you. Lesson plans, video links, everything right at your fingertips. Pitfalls: Deciding what you want to do and where to start.

An Index of US Military Support Web Sites Good for all grade levels Real World activities that will benefit soldiers Great project for requiring the students to organize, plan, execute a real world project Pitfall- teacher would have to okay the project to make sure that it is something that is grade level appropriate or that the project doesn't require a fee.

Direactly from the website: "The NWP Digital Is website is a collection of ideas, reflections, and stories about what it means to teach writing in our digital, interconnected world. Read, discuss, and share ideas about teaching writing today."

This may be an interesting disscusion point for you and your language teachers...

Here's a great global collabo for Feb mainly 4th-10th grades skype, blog, ... landmark project