Online Collaborative Projects

Online collaboration is probably the reason the Web, in its current state, exists in the first place. Even in its earliest conceptions (ARPAnet), the web existed for people, working together, to share ideas and information. Without this aspect the information could be just as easily found in an almanac.

Online collaborative projects, therefore, come under an extremely wide spectrum of activities. The term collaborative means everything from a single student conversing with another student, to entire school communities around the world completing the same project. Any activity that involves communication using the computer falls under the heading of online collaboration.

Faced with this open-ended description, teachers need to create a criteria to manage the volumes of choices which appear to be limited only by one's imagination. The following criteria was used in selecting the Lesson Plans that appear here.

1. realistic time constraints
2. variety of collaboration
3. computer lab and classroom computer usage
4. teacher led email
5. related to curriculum
6. practical / real world