Free platform for connecting your classroom with one somewhere else, currently spanning more than 130 countries. Lighter lift than iEARN, with pre-designed projects you can join or your own that you post. Good first step if a full collaborative project feels like too much.

Nonprofit network running since 1988, now in roughly 145 countries, connecting classrooms in structured project-based collaborations. Every iEARN project has to answer whether it improves quality of life on the planet, which is a higher bar than most pen-pal setups. Projects are SDG-aligned and run on a calendar, so you join something already scheduled rather than building from nothing.

I've used Claude to generate stakeholder positions on a science question, then had students analyze the trade-offs between them and design solutions accounting for competing interests. The value is in the analysis, not the generation, so the framing matters: students are critiquing the AI's perspectives, not accepting them. Requires clear guardrails and a conversation about whose viewpoints an AI is likely to flatten.

NASA-supported international science program where students collect real environmental data using scientist-written protocols and upload it to a global database that has been running since 1995. Students in 127 countries are measuring the same things you are, which makes comparison across places immediate and real. The strongest option on this list for a science classroom specifically.

Free app where students photograph organisms in their own neighborhood and get identifications from a worldwide community, with verified observations feeding into global biodiversity databases. Place-based and global in the same action. Works on a walk around the block!