Finding International Partners for Collaboration

You want to engage your students in an international virtual exchange but cannot figure out how to find an international partner for it? 🌎🤝💻Here are six platforms or ideas for connecting with global educators:

👉Unicollaboration. The Virtual Exchange Partner Finding Tool supports academics in finding a partner within the European Community.

👉Gridpals (by Flipgrid). Log in to the Educator Dashboard, complete the profile, and activate GridPals (to connect students of all ages). I myself found a fantastic partner I have collaborated with, Dr. Beth Ritter-Guth, to facilitate authentic learning for my college students in the last four years.

👉ePals. Post a profile and browse through those of other educators to find a suitable match. ePals offers a safe #penpal exchange platform for students of all ages. This also provides an opportunity to co-design virtual exchanges or engage in existing projects. This platform helped me find amazing educators (like Rebecca Botts and Richard DeStefano) more than a decade ago as I broke down classroom walls for the first time.

👉Stevens Initiative- Its aim is to help build #globalcompetence and career readiness skills for young people in the United States and the Middle East and North Africa. You can join a programme implemented by a grantee or get support to start a collaborative project.

👉PenPalSchools - It facilitates cross-cultural, authentic, PBL experiences. You can connect your classroom with the world through online projects.

👉Twitter and Linkedin. Build your professional learning network (PLN) by following other educators in the world, discussing and sharing ideas with them.

👉Conferences, International Professional Associations or International Professional Development Programmes. Engage in lifelong learning and networking by joining or attending any of these. In the last few years I have met very supportive international colleagues I have learnt a lot from by joining IATEFL (for English Language Teaching, ELT). You can find like-minded professionals to do things together and also be introduced to others. This is how I connected with Kari Kristensen, who has become a very dear friend of mine. I met her years ago as I was invited to join a team of four educators from different countries to support one another by being ready to work on projects or collaborative tasks that would enrich the learning experience for our students.

These are only six ideas for connecting with international educators. Finding a suitable partner can be the key to sustainability and success of any virtual exchange.

Has any of these platforms or ways to connect and find partners worked for you? Which one would you like to try?