Teachers are the experts on how to make the Global Virtual Classroom come to life in your classroom. Here are some of the most helpful tips for participating in collaborative online programs.

How To Motivate Students?

• Make your new friends real. Mount two more clocks on the wall to display the local time in your GVC partner schools. Mark your partner schools’ and your own locations on a world map.
• Get personal. Let your students choose e-mail pen pals from the other schools.
• Be a collector. Make a GVC scrapbook to keep all the letters, photos and other things you receive from your partner schools.
• Print and post. Post the students’ self-introductions on the bulletin board. Print out messages from the on-line forums and post them. Print out pages from your website and post them or hand them out to your students to take home.
• Get in touch. Write a class letter and send it to your partner classes through tthe mail. Or, send them a video tape or audio tape of the class working on the website or introducing themselves.*
• Make the most of multimedia. Use chat, instant messaging or video conferencing to allow your students to communicate in real time with their virtual classmates.**
• Grade your students' GVC work just as you would any other class assignment.
• Reward. Present individual students with awards for creativity, improvement, leadership skill, artistic talent, hard work, etc.

*Before exchanging video tapes, find out what tape format your partner schools use (VHS, VHS-C, 8mm, digital, etc.), in addition to the broadcast standard used in their countries (NTSC, PAL, SECAM, etc.)

** Be aware that the GVC Project Manager cannot offer technical support for collaboration software such as ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger or Powwow. Please contact their developers.

If you have a great idea or tip, please submit and share with us -- we might post it on this website!