Yes, Teach About U.S. has a responsive design, i.e. it recognizes and automatically adjusts its interface to your device. All functions that are available on regular desktop computers will also be available to smartphone and tablet users. This means that you and your students will be able to access the course materials flexibly ‘on the go’.

In addition, some users have found using the Moodle Mobile App helpful. 

SEE ALSO:

• Moodle App (external link)

As with the final competition, we highly encourage to use the Teach About U.S. classroom materials, but this is not a mandatory requirement for participation. Although we provide an interesting, interactive, and up-to-date selection of authentic materials, you can also choose to use only part of the materials or only participate in the competition. Again, you are very welcome to join the project and implement it into your classroom according to your needs and capacities.

We highly encourage participants to develop their own sustainability action plans (Going Green) / their election predictions (U.S. Election) and take part in the student competition, but this is not a mandatory requirement. Although such a participation will offer a great motivational incentive to your students, we understand that sometimes time pressure and other constraints can stand in the way of such an approach. So, the message here is: You are very welcome to participate in the project, even if you cannot submit a contribution to the competition.

If you haven't already, please create a user account. Once logged in, you can access the demo courses for our various school projects under the tab Sustainabability → Demo courses or U.S. Election → Demo.

Do you want to use the course materials with your students or use a password-protected Moodle course in class? 

Simply fill out our course request form with the required course details. If that should not work, you can alternatively send an email to our web administrator Katja Krüger at krueger@life-online.de, stating:

• Name of teacher:
• E-mail:
• Bundesland or state/city:
• Name of school:
• Class grade:
• Participation with a partner school (yes/no):

Please note that your students will have to register as well in order to get access to this e-classroom. Registration is simple and secure, and can be completed less than two minutes. Your students can use a registration tutorial with simple instructions in the quick links area of our title page. 

In addition to the private classrooms, all Moodle courses are connected to the Virtual Town Hall, a meta-course where all registered project participants can meet and communicate beyond classroom borders.

SEE ALSO:

• Registration tutorial
• Course request form (teachers only)
• How to - Explainer videos
  

There are two ways to enroll your students in the course:

• self-enrollment with an enrollment key
• manual enrollment by the teacher

Self-enrollment with an enrollment key

1. Ask your students to create a user account by clicking on the link "create new account / lost password" and follow the link to create a new account. They have to read the privacy policies, click on "next" and "confirm" then enter the necessary items to create an account.
   
2. Tell them the enrollment key for your course (you will receive it from our web administrator, Katja Krüger, via email).
3. Once logged in, students can insert their school's name in the course search field on the title page. Alternatively, they can click on courses in the Sustainability tab or the U.S. Election tab, respectively. Your course will be named according to your school name, for example "BE | GG 19/20 | Heinrich-Schliemann-Gymnasium, 12" (i.e. the 12th-grade course at Heinrich-Schliemann-Gymnasium in Berlin participating in the Going Green 2019/20 project cycle).
4. Upon clicking on the course link, students will be prompted to type in the enrollment key (see above).
5. Your students can now access the course page. The enrollment key is only necessary once for the first registration.

[fa-external-link] Moodle documentation: self-enrollment 

Manual Enrollment by the teacher

1. Ask your students to create an account following the instructions in our registration tutorial.
2. In your course, go to the side block Administration, select Users → Enrolled Users.
3. You will see a table with two users: yourself and "Going Green" (a pre-defined virtual teacher, used for trouble shooting by administrators etc.).
4. Click on Enroll Users. In the list of authenticated users, look up your students individually and click on Enroll beside their name (this only works if students registered their accounts using their actual names).
5. Click on Finish enrolling users. Your students are now enrolled in the course and can access the tasks and materials.

SEE ALSO:

• Registration tutorial
• How to - Explainer videos
  

Since our projects are implemented in a variety of school contexts, we have included a flexible focus on language in the materials. Apart from authentic text-based target language materials, you will also find a rich selection of audiovisual materials. We also provide language tasks in categories like vocabulary acquisition, written text production, language and culture mediation, cartoon analysis, and others. In addition, for most tasks there are additional self-study resources for students that explain the task type and provide an easy-to-use self-assessment grid, e.g. for mediation asks, cartoon analysis etc.

Are you a U.S. teacher and want to reach out to a German partner? Contact our colleagues at the Transatlantic Outreach Program (top@goethe.de) at the Goethe Institut in Washington D.C. Together, we will try to match you with a German partner.

Please include the following information in your email:

• Name:
• E-Mail:
• City, State:
• School:
• Class grade(s) and Subjects:
• Number of students who would (ideally) participate:
• Comments/Questions/Preferences:

Transatlantic Outreach Program U.S. teacher liaison

The Transatlantic Outreach Program, based at the Goethe-Institut in Washington D.C., is the primary U.S.-based partner for Teach About U.S. TOP supports us in connecting German and U.S. teachers and aligning our projects with U.S. curricula.

Contact TOP about: participating in the U.S. finding partners in Germany

---
top@goethe.de
Goethe-Institut Washington, 1377 R St. NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009, USA

SEE ALSO:

• Going Green/Information for U.S. Teachers
• FAQ: My school doesn’t have a U.S. partner. Can we find partners online?

Yes, we highly encourage partner schools or courses to participate together as teams. In fact, this is a great way to intensify your partnership and complement your regular exchange programs. Simply let us know that you want to cooperate in the project and we will provide a joint e-classroom with access for both learner groups. The Moodle platform facilitates easy and effective collaboration online.

For Going Green, we also encourage these teams to jointly develop their sustainability action plans and seek possibilities of implementing them on both sides of the Atlantic. In the last two project cycles, we were able to award a special prize to outstanding transatlantic projects and partnerships.

For the U.S. Election Project, existing school partnerships can complement the project participation. The main goal is that German students predict the election outcome in their adopted U.S. state. German students can reach out to their American partners to inquire about their home state, for examply conduct skype interviews on the political culture, voting history, economy etc. in the state. German teachers, please let us know during the registration that you already have a U.S.-based partner so that state can be assigned to your group.

Yes, there are several sources of useful support for teachers and students. Through our classroom research in previous e-learning projects we are well aware that this will be the first e-learning experience for many participants. 

Local teacher trainings

Teach About U.S. provides ready-to-use materials for participants and does not require prior experience with Moodle. We offer teacher trainings on using Moodle in class (check our upcoming events). 

Support materials

In addition, detailed teaching notes can be found throughout every Moodle course, usually at the start of each course section as well as in the Virtual Town Hall. These resources explain the use of our platform by providing practical teaching tips, curriculum rationales, and links to support materials by the Moodle community.

Many general and helpful resources on using Moodle can also be found at https://docs.moodle.org/401/en/Main_page. Check out the "Quick Guides" for teachers for a brief overview of the main features in Moodle.

You can find the appropriate documentation on every page when you click the link "Help and documentation" right above the footer.

Contact us

If you get stuck somewhere, feel free to contact the Teach About U.S. team for help! Here is our contact page. 

Yes, Teach About U.S. curricula are suitable for different types of CLIL (content and language integrated learning; bilinguales Sachfachlernen) courses, especially with a focus on political and social sciences. The Going Green project and the project week "Power to the People - Renewable Energy in the Community" also foster the integration of STEM school subjects. The project materials provide opportunities for language practice, political and civic learning, as well as intercultural contents. The paradigm of research-based learning on local case studies is at the heart of all of our school projects and the materials offer various possible ways to make adjustments to your specific learner group.

SEE ALSO:

• Promoting STEM-based learning in Going Green
• Power to the People (EFL and STEM project week)
  
• Humboldt 250 (EFL and history/geography)

Once you've found a colleague overseas who is willing to start a cooperation between both courses, let our webadministrator, Katja Krüger (krueger@life-online.de), know about this (unless we have matched you with your partner). The most convenient form of collaboration is to enroll students from both classes in the same Moodle course. We will provide you with two enrollment keys for your course - one for German students and one for U.S. students - so that they automatically belong to two separate groups within the course. In your course, your students can do the tasks in parallel mode and exchange their findings in Skype calls or a forum and document them in the course journal or blog. You can also insert a forum for planning purposes that is only available to you and your teacher colleague. Simply set it to 'invisible' so your students will not be able to see or access it.

For both school projects, the standard Moodle course now contains a course journal, course forum, a database, and a glossary at the top of the course page. These are not attached to a specific task and can be used flexibly, for example for collaboration and communication beyond classroom borders.

You are not alone in this. From our teacher networks we know that the digital infrastructure in schools can vary tremendously, ranging from schools with wireless web-access and tablet classes to schools with traditional computer labs and rather inconvenient access to digital technologies.

Teach About U.S. does not require access to computers during each lesson. Inquire about arrangements at your school, for example, to use your computer lab once a week. If possible and backed by your local school policy, also ask your students to bring their own devices as the platform is compatible with smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

The materials also allow for a flipped classroom approach (see below), i.e. asking your learners to access the online materials at home and discussing them at school. In addition, selected Teach About U.S. materials are accessible for download, so that participants can use them in an ‘offline’ environment. (Check out our download section.)

What is a flipped class? from TEXAS Learning Sciences on Vimeo.

We don’t want you to take unnecessary detours from your curriculum. This is why we have designed the project contents in line with state curricula for English in the upper secondary school and U.S. curricula.  This means that the suggested classroom work should cover curriculum contents and can, if necessary, be easily extended or adjusted. Think of it as an invitation to incorporate new teaching and learning resources into your classes as well as a strong connection to learning with digital media and authentic resources.

Please also review our suggestions for the curricular implementation of the various school projects: 

» Going Green and German EFL curricula

» Going Green and STEM-based learning

» Going Green and U.S. curricula

» U.S. Election project and German EFL curricula

It is good that you consider this issue and we encourage teachers and students to make this a discussion point in their courses, especially if this your first encounter with e-learning. We can assure your privacy and personal information are securely protected on the Teach About U.S. platform.

This platform has been jointly developed under the expertise of LIFE e.V./eXplorarium, a non-profit e-learning specialist based in Berlin. It has been accredited and co-funded by the Berlin Senate of Education, Science, and Research and the European Social Fund. LIFE e.V. is partner of many schools in Berlin with now more than 25 years of experience in school cooperation projects. It also played a leading role in the development and administration of the U.S. Embassy School Election Project 2012 and its Moodle platform, in which more than 1,400 German students participated in an e-learning project and mock election of the U.S. President.

All files and personal and communication data generated on Teach About U.S. can be deleted at your wish. Learn more about LIFE e.V. at http://www.life-online.de/ and their e-learning section ‘eXplorarium’ at http://www.explorarium.de/  and have a look at our privacy policy.

SEE ALSO:

• Teach About U.S. privacy policy

Instruct your students to register their accounts on Teach About U.S. and join your project course by copying this email. Don't forget to enter your course name and enrollment key!

Dear students, 

Welcome to the U.S. Embassy School Election Project! You are joining more than 300 courses in Germany and the USA in this school project to predict who will enter the White House as the next President of the U.S. 

Your course will adopt the state of: [Enter state]

You will be working with an interactive Moodle platform with exciting resources and tasks on various aspects of the election. To join the course, follow the steps listed here:

Create an account: http://bit.ly/TAUS-create-account

Find your course: http://bit.ly/TAUS-find-course 

In short, you must 1. create your user account on www.teachaboutus.org, 2. log-in using your user name and password, 3. find your Moodle course under U.S. Election > Courses, 4. enter the course password you will be given by your teacher. 

Your Moodle course is called: [Insert course title]

Your course password is: [Enter enrollment key]

You can also find other project participants in the Virtual Town Hall (U.S. Election > Virtual Town Hall). Once you enrolled in your class's Moodle course, you'll also have access to this meeting area.)

You can find the project on Facebook, too: https://www.facebook.com/TeachAboutUS/

Best, 

[Teacher's name] 

There are generally two options to organize your collaboration: share a Moodle course as a joint work and communication space, or use other online tools (e.g. Skype, email) outside this Moodle platform.

To share a Moodle course, ask our web administrator Katja Krüger (krueger@life-online.de) to create the course for you and provide you with the enrollment information.

The standard Moodle courses for the election project and the Going Green project are primarily targeted at German high school students and the tasks in it will reflect this. However, these activities are mostly content-based and will also allow U.S. students to work on the project theme in a meaningful way. Probably the best way to launch your cooperation is to discuss the project together with your colleague and seek out options for online exchanges. These exchanges can be facilitated via the course forum in your Moodle course or private messages between your students. You can also set up Skype meetings. For teachers, we have included a teacher-to-teacher forum at the top of the course page. It is invisible to students.

Online collaboration activities should progress through the three phases of (1) information exchange, (2) comparison and analysis, and (3) collaboration and product creation. Here are some ideas for such activities:

1. Information exchange

• Introduce yourself! Students introduce themselves in the course forum (either in groups or individually). This could involve the students' hobbies, school and community, everyday activities etc. You could use this as a first step, say, before a Skype conference.
• Create an info wall! Students create short blurbs and contribute short videos or photos of them in a shared padlet (an online pinboard). Propose guiding questions or an introductory theme, e.g. "Sustainability on our school campus" or "What we want to learn about our peers". Avoid controversial or face-threatening issues at this stage. At this introductory phase, a primary focus should be on trust-building and socializing activities.
• Prepare mini-presentations! Students can prepare short presentations about their home town and relate it to the project topic, e.g. "Public transportation in my town," "Grocery shopping in our town" etc.
• Exchange questionnaires! German students could formulate questions about their U.S. partners' home state and community: What does life look like there? Who are the people living in the state? What about the landscape and climate? What are famous tourist attractions? etc. Our German students are supposed to become experts on their assigned state and instead of researching this information online, they could discuss it directly with their U.S. peers. Use the Moodle plugin for creating questionnaires or tools like Google forms.
• Discovery task: Ask students to review their partners' responses from the above activities and identify the most interesting, funny, or strange aspects. Why are these aspects so unexpected? What can students learn from them?

2. Comparison and analysis

• In Going Green, students in both courses can complete the self-study modules and eco-challenges in parallel mode and exchange their findings, e.g. by posting them in the Moodle course (see Demo Course, course section "2. Group work // Exploring the challenges"). For example, in module on plastic and recycling, students on both sides can describe their schools' recycling and waste management policies, investigate their peers' attitudes towards this issue through a poll, or document the amount and types of plastic waste found on the school grounds.
• Results from both groups should be compared: What are similarities and differences in both school communities? What could be possible reasons, e.g. attitudes ("Recycling considered more/less important than here"), infrastructure ("There are recycling bins installed everywhere on campus"), practices and habits ("People are accustomed to buying 'take-away' and 'to-go' products that are packaged individually"), and other aspects.
• Communication: Your Moodle course offers the options of asynchronous communication (forum discussion) and synchronous communication (instant messages between users).
• Collaboration: Your Moodle course contains a course database for uploading and sharing files and text. Also, a project journal can be used to document work processes and results.

3. Collaboration and product creation

• Students work together to produce a joint product or conclusion of their collaboration
• In Going Green, students can produce a joint sustainability action plan for both schools, e.g. launch a PSA campaign in both schools, organize a parallel upcycling festival, prepare a parallel presentation on "lessons we can learn from our transatlantic partners" etc.
• Discuss the idea online, define a joint goal (create a website, shoot a video, organize an event, ...), and establish roles for the participants.
• Set up a workplan, e.g. a mode for communication, a time frame (when to exchange ideas, when to meet virtually, by when to have results ready, ...)
• Agree on how the result will be presented and, possibly, published online. How is it going to be evaluated? For example, students can write reports for their school websites or personal reflections in a learning portfolio or blog.

For more useful and hands-on activities, check out the UniCollaboration task database.

You see, the options for collaboration are varied. What your cooperation will look like will depend on the available time budget, student motivation, and other factors. We would like to stress that this exchange can be very flexible, ranging from a single e-mail exchange to regular Skype chats and joint development of learner projects. The goal is to create a satisfying learning experience for both sides, and have fun along the way!

SEE ALSO:

• Going Green Telecollaboration Manual
  

• O'Dowd, R., & Ware, P. (2009). Critical Issues in Telecollaborative Task Design. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 22(2), 173–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588220902778369

We invite all teachers and students of English and CLIL courses in Germany as well as interested courses in the U.S. to participate in the project and the student competition for sustainable action plans. The target group comprises EFL courses in the upper secondary level ("Qualifikationsphase") and students in the U.S. in social sciences and German as a foreign language classes.

Access to the platform

Yes, you and your students will have access to the platform after the conclusion of the project. This is especially important for courses in the German Gymnasium, where course contents will be important for comprehensive Abitur exams. In fact, the Moodle platform can easily become a record of classroom work for future reference and participants in our previous projects made intensive use of online materials for later class tests.

Data management and deletion of account

All user report data on this platform are automatically deleted by default after 180 days. All user accounts are deleted by default four years after the last user activity. 

Participants can also request the deletion of their accounts. Simply click on your user menu (the user name in the top right corner) and select Profile. In the section Privacy and Policies you'll find the settings to delete your account, export your personal data, and related options.