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This site allows teachers to search for prospective collaborating students and teachers. You can search by age range, language spoken, academic subject, key words, geographical region, etc. In my initial attempts to look around at projects, the quality of engagement seems to be lacking in many cases. Still, there are some interesting tools if any of our students wanted to make their work accessible to this online community.

"Set Up Web 2.0 Tools and Get Started An ePals Project Workspace is created for you once your project is approved. Use the blog, Discussion forums, file exchange library, calendar, and wiki to execute your project. The workspace is private to you and your collaborative partners."

"The FIDS framework cultivates the I CAN mindset that allows children to believe they are not helpless, that change is possible and they can drive it. It develops the 21st century skills and creative confidence in people empowering them to use their creative agency to design innovative solutions." http://designthinkingguide.dfcworld.com/

"DESIGN FOR CHANGE is the largest global movement designed to give children an opportunity to express their own ideas for a better world and put them into action. Children and adults learn through the Design for Change Challenge that "I Can" are the two most powerful words a person can believe. Children who have discovered this are changing their world. This year, Design for Change reaches 34 countries and over 300,000 schools inspiring hundreds of thousands of children, their teachers and parents, to celebrate the fact change is possible and that they can lead that change! The challenge asks students to do four very simple things: Feel, Imagine, Do and Share. Children are dreaming up and leading brilliant ideas all over the world, from challenging age-old superstitions in rural communities, to earning their own money to finance school computers to solving the problem of heavy school bags - children are proving that they have what it takes to be able to 'design' a future that is desired." - See more at: http://www.dfcworld.com/about.html#sthash.156lf0CC.dpuf

Jesse is a good friend of mine. He is now teaching Sustainability at the College of Charleston, but in the past has founded an NGO www.ecofficiency.org He did this TEDx talk while he was at UC Irvine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwGLENEuNGM He starts by saying, "Sustainability ... is a vague concept ... that has been manipulated by a wide variety of people and organizations in order to push projects and ideas... that aren't what I would call sustainable." He's done a lot of work with US and international schools over the years and would, no doubt, be willing to skype in to talk to our students.