Carolyn Wright
What is ePals?
Creating relationships among learners around the globe! ePals is an online community that allows teachers to find classrooms with similar aged students and in any language.Partner classrooms can be picked based on age, number of students, language spoken, subjects, and region. Classrooms using the program exist in every region around the world.
Using this program, teachers can help their students to collaborate in a variety of subjects, deepening their understanding and helping to gain other points of view. Students are able to use technology in a natural way while working on academic content. Images, videos, and e-mails can be shared with ease, while creating modern friendships and educational partnerships.
It is a highly engaging community that offers teacher guided academic discussions as well as opportunities for students to have relaxed social interactions. Students learn so much when they become teachers and this is an excellent forum for children to explore that role.
Student Safety
ePals was created for use in classrooms and therefore is very safe. It has its own e-mail service which is safe and secure for students of all ages. It is recommended that teachers create permission slips for use by children under thirteen years old. All e-mails can be seen by teachers and all profiles must be approved by ePals staff before they can begin contacting other users. More information about safety measures can be found on http://en.community.epals.com/epals/support/p/what-is-schoolsafe.aspx.
How do you use it?
Teachers begin by creating their own classroom page. This done through a free account and gives teachers an opportunity to give a brief description of their class so that other educators can search for them.
After creating an account, teachers can choose to create their own project or search for one that already exists.
Using this search tool, teachers can pick which language they want their partners to speak and what age range they want the students to be in. They can also search for an existing project on a certain subject by searching for a keyword. Examples could be weather, leaders, holidays, etc.
This feature allows teachers to search for a partner classroom in a specific region.
Projects can be searched for as well based on what content area the teacher is interested in connecting with.
ePals in the Classroom
This could be integrated into science or social studies. Teachers would be able to use mapping in their own classrooms to meet geography and math standards. http://www.epals.com/project-detail.php?id=3e7aabda-4666-47d9-b696-77a5766f346f
Is Your Leader Elected Too? is a project that would definitely help students to create a deeper understanding of governments and create context to compare and contrast their own experiences with the experiences of students around the world.
http://www.epals.com/project-detail.php?id=b651c466-e72b-48b8-87a2-919d409ec924
Every Picture Has a Story with Alabama Classroom is a project that was created by the Smithsonian Museum. Connecting arts, writing, and social studies, students make observations and predictions about the chronological order of paintings based on similarities and styles of the different time periods. http://www.epals.com/project-detail.php?id=7676c175-e780-400e-9ab0-dcb2c79e9882
Other Reviews by Educators
http://www.brighthubeducation.com/teaching-middle-school/38129-a-review-of-epals-com-pros-and-cons/
All images are from http://www.epals.com/index.php
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