A classroom math project can be come more meaningful by collaborating with classrooms all around the world through the Internet. In this blog I will suggest features that are part of good collaborative projects and some examples of ways to make math activities from existing global collaborative projects.

Features of good collaborative projects:
1. Central question engages student to think.
2. Students can share data, solutions, and strategies.
3. Students can peer assess and tutor via the internet.

Guidelines and requirements:
1. Teachers should know who and how students are collaborating.
2. Teachers must make sure that students are following district Internet policies.
3. It is easiest to use existing Internet sites.
4. Get parent permission to internet publish reports, artwork, pictures, or video.

Math activities ideas using existing global projects:
The Big Mac index was invented by The Economist in 1986 as a lighthearted guide to currencies but now it is used for much more. This index allows teachers and students to ask mathematically testable questions, such as, “In what countries could the average person work for one hour and buy a Big Mac?” Collaboration comes from reading the blog posts on The Economist website and posting a hypothesis or some analysis through the teacher.

The Down the Drain Project is a collaborative community that analyzes how much water people use everyday. This project has worksheets and guidelines that support the teaching of creating hypothesis, making predictions, analyzing data to test predictions, and write conclusions. There is a worksheet calculating daily water use and sharing the data with the collaborative project members.

Site for starting a new collaborative project:
Class2class is an Internet service where math teachers can come to join in new projects and collaborations.