General Tips for Designing

Any Internet Project

1. Be sure your project has specific goals, tasks, and outcomes.
2. Set specific beginning and ending dates and deadlines for participation. Post your first call for collaboration at least six weeks before the starting date and repeat it two weeks before the starting date, if you still need participants.
3. Be sure to send thank you regrets to anyone who responds that you are unable to use. This will let them know you appreciate their interest, even though you could not use them.
4. If possible, try your project on a small scale with another teacher. This can help with troubleshooting for technical or project design problems.
5. Be sure to include the following in your call for collaboration:
   • Goals and objectives;
   • Grade level and number of participants desired;
   • A contact person, location, and complete contact information;
   • Examples of kinds of writing or data collection students will submit;
   • Time line and deadlines;
   • What you will do with the responses.
6. Properly train student participants in the project
7. At the end of the project share results with all participants by sending them a hard copy of any student writing, graphs, etc.
8. Have students help write and post a summary of the project to the whold network, describing it, telling what they did, what they learned, and any changes they would make.
9. If your project is successful, give yourself some well-deserved publicity by sending a copy of the summary to your principal, PTA president, superintendent, board of education president, or locat newspaper
10. Have students send thank-you messages to all contributors.