If you are an educator and are struggling to look for collaborative and enriching activities for your students inside your school or in your community then look no further! “Teachers’ Guide to Global Collaboration” is a website that allows educators and students around the world to participate in global and nationwide activities and projects right from their classroom. Teachers can find organizations that are looking for help with large scale projects, projects submitted by other teachers who would like to collaborate in specific subject areas, and even submit a request to publish your own project idea that you would like others to join. It is a great way for educators to reach new classrooms and have their students create work that is impactful outside of their schools!

My Experience

When I first opened the website I immediately opened the projects tab and searched for “art.” In clinical practice to becoming an art teacher, I have found so much more value in collaborative projects than I was expecting. I have implemented several collaborative lessons and while they were awkward for the students at first, they grew to love working together and sharing their knowledge with each other. One of my favorite projects I gave students was to work in groups along with one or more dancers from the dance class next door and try to create beautiful photographs of the dancers capturing motion and using everything they have learned about photography thus far. The students were so excited and they got to use the entire inside and outside of the school to take their pictures and they created wonderful and thoughtful images. I was so proud of their results and so happy that they enjoyed the project. However, it was difficult to give them more than just a couple days with the dancers because a mistake was made and our schedules did not align with theirs. One downside in trying to collaborate with other classrooms in your school, is trying to get on schedule with each other in a way that does not hold anyone back. But the satisfaction of collaborating on a larger scale trumps that and creates such meaningful memories with the students. Therefore, I was happy to find so many different projects and organizations that are open to artistic collaborations on a national and global scale.

What I Found

One of the projects I found is a project called “A Sense of Caring” which I think is a beautiful project for elementary and middle school students. Students either send in or receive a story or poem about what caring is to them and then the student who receives it has to create artwork based on their story. The story and artwork are then paired together and used to create Service Learning Project where students take action and show the importance of caring for others and their community. This is a beautiful project that I could see myself using to introduce students to symbolism, general visual literacy, and collaboration in the art room.

This website also introduced me to a site called “Creative Connections.” This is a large online gallery that allows students and educators from all over the world to participate in and create exhibits with their original work to be displayed on their website. I have seen similar sites to this one, but this site seems well organized with how each exhibition is separated and labeled. I could see myself asking my students to participate in this site. Not every student can be in the art show or sent to the Teen Arts Festival, so this is a great alternative for students or have students work published on a larger scale.

Overall, I think “Teachers’ Guide to Global Collaboration” is a wonderful way for teachers and students to collaborate beyond the small world of their classrooms. It is convenient and easy to navigate. I could see myself using this website to not only join projects created by other teachers, but also possibly to create a long term project for my students or school community to get involved in. I noticed the site does not have many projects that are long term with rolling registration, so I would love to contribute to that some day.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS A RANGE OF ORGANIZATIONS AND PROJECTS TO COLLABORATE WITH OR START YOUR OWN!

Thank you for reading!

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