My Name - As participants come in give them the My Name activity sheet and tell them this is how they introduce themselves.  This will give them time to write the ascrotic poem. They will need to add their school if from multiple locations and what they teach.  If there is time later in the workshop have them go to the My Name forum and respond to students.

    Bio Poem - Give the Bio Poem activity sheet to participants as they enter so they have time to write their poems.

Ice Breaker Activities

    World Figures - use the World Figures powerpoint to show the power of collaboration.  First have participants try to guess who the people are. There should be no discussion or Internet searches.  Do a poll to see how many they could guess.  Then let them get in small groups and collectively see how many can be identified.  The results with the collaboration should be better than than the individual results. Change the figures to keep them current.  Have different cultures and occupations represented including entertainment, sports, politics, technology, etc.

    Capitalize on It- Participants try to identify the countries for captials.  First they do it by themselves and then do it with a partner.  This shows the power of collaboration

    Quotes - Post quotes about making a difference around the room and have participants choose their favorites.

    Greetings in other languages - The Greetings Ice Breaker helps people to appreciate the diversity of languages and cultures in the World while learning a word or greeting in a different language. Depending on how you implement it, the Greetings Ice Breaker can be a fun activity to refresh participants/trainees at a workshop or training. It can be administered at the beginning, in between or at the end of a workshop.

                  *  Download Greetings Ice Breaker Exercise

Learning about iEARN

     Greetings and world map - At least a week before the workshop post a message in the Teachers Forum http://foro.iearn.org/webx/iearnforums/teachers/ asking members to welcome your participants.  Print these out and distribute them to teachers.  Have each teacher read their greeting and place a sticker on a map to show where the greeting is from.  After all the greetings are read ask the participants what they learned about iEARN from them. If there is time in the workshop for the participants to go to the forum have them respond to the greetings. 

         The Peters Projection Map is good to use for this activity because it is a better representation on actual land size.  

    Oxfam has some good classroom map activities to explain the different projections at http://www.sharemylesson.com/ResourceDetail.aspx?storyCode=6066149

Project Showcase Videos - http://us.iearn.org/videos and http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL90C34CBDE656CF50 The Chicago Public Schools video is a particularly good with comments from students, teachers and administrators.

20th Anniversary Video - View the video and then have participants discuss what they learned about iEARN from it.

    Wordle Review - After reading greetings and/or viewing a video about iEARN ask the participants to describe iEARN in one or two words.  Write the answers in a text editing document.     For more than one word, connect the words with a hyphen to keep them together. Insert iEARN two or three times.  When finished with the list, copy it and paste it into box on http://wordle.net/create and click Go.  Take a screen shot of this wordle to use later. At the end of the workshop bring back your list of words and ask the teachers if they have any new ones to add.  Then ask them to pick the words that are most descriptive. Copy those words and add them to the list several times. Add more iEARN as needed to make sure it the most repeated word in the list.  Copy the full list and repeat the process of creating a wordle.  Compare the wordles from the beginning and end of the workshops. 

Powerpoint presentation

    Getting to Know the Collaboration Centre - Here is an activity to help teachers learn how to use the Collaboration Centre        

                    * Download the activity

                    * Download a Powerpoint presentation created by the International Education Association of Lebanon to help learn about the Collaboration Centre

                    * Download Getting Started with iEARN Projects: Guide to New iEARN Collaboration Centre by Society for International Education/iEARN-Pakistan

                    * iEARN Scavenger Hunt for students created by Freda Goodman.

    Multimedia Guide to iEARN Jigsaw Activity- Participants work in small groups and teach others about the information in the guide.  The guide is available on line at http://us.iearn.org/professional_development/multimedia/index.html

    iEARN Movies - This link will take you to links for movies about iEARN and some of the projects.

           Here's a resource that features iEARN classes in Egypt and Thailand.  It's a couple years old, but great video clips --

"A new offering from the Office of English Language Programs, Shaping the Way We Teach English, is a 14-module teacher training video series developed and produced in cooperation with the University of Oregon. The series incorporates classroom scenes from around the world and is accompanied by a teacher trainer manual and additional readings."

Classes involved in the iEARN Good Deeds Project and Teddy Bear Project are featured about halfway through the "Module 03, Integrating Skills," segment 2 video. 

http://oelp.uoregon.edu/shaping.html

    iEARN Introduction for Students- Created by Freda Goodman for Future Citizens project  http://padlet.com/wall/futurecitizen   

    iEARN Evaluation- This link is useful to show if you have administrator or school board members in the workshop.  It has information about research done on iEARN  http://www.iearn.org/impact/research-and-evaluation

    Hands on Activities - Divide the participants in small groups according to their interests to do these activities.  Have them share what they did to the whole group and tell how they could use it with their students.

One Page descriptions about Projects - print appropriate ones for participants

   Getting Started in iEARN

    Buddy Contract

    Forum Response Rubric

    Telecommunications Activity-Practice communicating without seeing or hearing each other.

    Machinto- This presentation is good to show a project from start to finish. http://connect.scdsb.on.ca/machintopresentation 

    Teachers Guide to Exchange 2.0 Technology-Enabled International Interaction- A page created by iEARN for the Department of Education and now on Connect All Schools

    International Education Washington: Starter Kits for International Collaboration http://www.internationaledwa.org/starter_kit/default.htm by Jennifer Geist, Seattle, Washington USA

        This includes curriculum material for: 

               

          Buck Institute of Education Free Planning Tools for project based learning.