ePals

ePals is a great distance education learning activity. ePals allows students from around the world to connect with each other safely online. It allows students, parents and educators to collaborate. ePals has insured the safety of all students who use the program with virus controls, forums are screened, and they comply with CIPA (as well as COPPA and FERPA).

There is no charge to join ePals. Join by yourself or as a part of a larger group (such as a classroom or school). “Students cannot create profiles, only teachers, parents and other adult learners are allowed”. ePals has automatic translator tools in place for Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Korean, and Spanish.

This can be incorporated into the classroom by connecting with other classes around the world that are working on the same topic as your classroom. You can search by a location to connect with a class – perhaps to learn more about that area of the world. This can also be incorporated into the classroom with using the ePals forum – which is a discussion board.

As a teacher ePals offers “Ask an ePals Teacher” which helps connect educators around the world if you are looking for answers to specific questions.

ePals also offers a “SchoolBlog” which can allow our classroom to blog about projects they are doing, or what they’re learning about in class. The possibilities are endless. What’s great is other readers can comment on the blog, and this can create discussions and also can teach other classrooms around the world exactly what they are learning or doing in class. This also allows teachers to “post homework assignments, field trips” – it allows parents to see what their child is learning.

The technology used is a computer, you would log in to ePals on their main website. Any grade level can use this for any subject. I think this is a great tool to use to incorporate into the classroom. I feel that students learn more from their peers than they do from teachers because they relate to their peers more. To be able to have our classroom interact with another classroom across the world is so awesome in so many ways. Students can learn new cultures, and become more open-minded about other places in the world. Also it's very cool how classrooms that are no where near each other can work together as though they are near each other.