ePal

Resources
[] (5:06 minutes) “San Diego, China and Others Collaborate through Email, Blogs, and Web Conferences” Candace shares highlights of her seven years experience pairing her students in San Diego with students in China and other places. She provides a lot of practical suggestions for using blogs and pen pals with students in a high school language arts classroom. The first 29 minutes are one presentation, and the time after that is a second presentation, both about how she uses ePals. 53:00 minutes (really two presentations in one-hour time slot) []
 * []
 * "E-Palling Around," //T.H.E. Journal// (Nov. 2008): []
 * “ePals: Students Collaborating on Weather, Climate Change and More,” //Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears//, Peoples of the Arctic - Issue 16, October 2009. []
 * "Adapting Social Networking to Address 21st Century Skills," //Multimedia & Internet at School// (Sept. 2008): []
 * [|Reaching the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) with ePals] (June 2008)
 * []
 * Cornelius, C. and Vest, T. Spicing Up Spanish Class, //Learning & Leading with Technology,// May 2009, p. 32-33 (www.iste.org) Tells the story of a Spanish teacher and media specialist who worked together to create powerful lessons through Spanish-speaking pen pals and ePals. The two won an ISTE award for this work. ** You must be an ISTE member to access this content . **
 * Charron, N. “I learned that there’s a state called Victoria and he has six blue-tongued lizards!” //The Reading Teacher// (May 2007): Pen pal program via ePals encourages grade 4 students to write and gives them the opportunity to communicate with others from around the world. The Internet pen pal program facilitates communication through the use of authentic tasks and teaches students about different cultures. **You must be an IRA member to access this content**
 * Founder **Tim DiScipio** interview**,** at NMSA: Tim interviewed about how ePals got started, how teachers use it, translation features, parental communication, some projects used.
 * Candace Pauchnick, CUE 2009 conference presentation in Palm Springs, CA

Strengths

 * Membership is free in global community (200 countries, 600,000 K12 classrooms)
 * Free to use the powerful, teacher-monitored SchoolMail
 * Students can connect to other students anywhere in the world
 * Teachers reach out to other teachers and connect their classes as a whole; students are not seeking out other students to pair up with
 * Safe and protected; managed by teachers and administrators
 * Collaborative Learning Experience
 * Designed for primary and secondary schools to use
 * Tour provided to familiarize users with site
 * Students can all share a similar user name and password or can each have their own
 * Language translation feature in SchoolMail and in profiles to 35 languages
 * Student forums allow students to read and respond to postings from other students, moderated by ePals staff (students can ask a question and get answers from around the world!)
 * Fast and easy registration process
 * Allows students to take virtual field trips and compete in fun contests with children from all over the world
 * Teacher's corner is filled with lessons, tips and tools to use in the classroom
 * Contains collaborative projects allowing children in different nations to interact, give suggestions, and support one another through the use of forums
 * Provides a variety of ways to find others with whom to interact (Search by classroom, map, or project)
 * Offers secure e-mail option.
 * Provides a school blog that offers customized security and moderation functions to monitor activity and restrict user access.
 * Allows forum interaction based on the categories of students, teachers, and parents
 * ePals, Inc. is a certified licensee of the [|TRUSTe® Children's Privacy Program], which has been approved by the Federal Trade Commission as an authorized safe harbor under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule. (Not that many education sites have TRUSTe certification standards.)

**Weaknesses: **


 * Teacher-driven (for projects), though Student Forums are completely student-driven
 * Requires students ages 13 and under to provide a parent/guardian's email address. This could be a problem in low socioeconomic areas where parents don't have access to home computers, much less internet. When a teacher registers a class, this isn't a problem, as the teacher gets parental permission (on paper if not on computer).
 * Although the focus areas and projects available are standards based, they are limited in number.
 * Through ePals privacy policy they are allowed to share personally identifiable information to third parties for educational purposes. This is said to be limited, although ePals does link to other sites and are not liable for the data collection practices of those sites.

** Opportunities **


 * Teachers can connect to other classrooms by searching by project or location
 * Students will be given opportunities to improve their writing, editing, and publishing skills
 * Collaboration is made easy
 * Opportunity to discuss world issues, such as global warming, with individuals who have a different perspective based on geographical location
 * Students have the opportunity to voice their opinion and contribute to worldwide discussions
 * Teachers can gather new and innovative teaching techniques and educational resources through a partnership with others educators around the world
 * in2books program that pairs a student with an adult e-mentor who read a selected book together and exchange ideas and information (the letters from the adult are pre-screened by the teacher and undergo background checks before being accepted as an e-mentor)
 * The language translation software that is built into the site and email. This is great for students talk to children from different areas of the world. This can also be great if you have ESOL parents at your school that have trouble communicating with you. This could be a great way to get a progress report or discuss things with the school.
 * Classes could upload videos with their pen pals on the blog to show/discuss things such as:
 * The four seasons
 * Virtual field trips to different areas in town (beach, museums, etc.)
 * Show food customs
 * Traditional clothing
 * Listen to popular music

** Threats **


 * Privacy policy states that they will collect personally identifying information such as name, date of birth, address, grade level, credit card information, what web pages were visited and many other bits of information.There are inherent risks anytime such information is collected and stored out of your personal control.
 * Websites such as ThinkQuest, iLearn.org offer collaboration as well (however they do NOT have TRUSTe certification, so they are less safe for student use)

Extensions
ePals offers LearningSpace, a way to tame web sprawl when multiple web 2.0 tools are used for student learning. See [|http://learningspace.epals.com] for a tour.

Ideas for the classroom
 * Can be implemented as a way for students to research other countries
 * Can be implemented as a way for students to share newly learned material with other students learning about the same topics
 * Can be implemented as a way for students to make connections with other students on a personal level
 * Can be used to actively engage students in scholarly discussions
 * Can be used to further knowledge and understanding of various cultures
 * Can be used as a tool for cooperative learning and project-based exploration/learning
 * Can be used for students to practice another language (Spanish, English, or whatever language) with native speakers, either in home country or wherever they live today
 * Can be way for students to extend learning about another place beyond what is in the textbook to include what they can learn from people who live in those other places
 * Can provide means of alternative assessment for the teacher. For example, the assignment "describe your home and where your family eats" can be written on paper or for a pen pal. Instead of just writin this for the teacher, the student can write for a pen pal and read what the pen pal writes back, increasing authentic use of language.