Epals - Expand your classroom horizons
"Some live by the shore and learn of the ocean, while some take the plunge within to learn of it and while doing so not only learn that the depth is unfathomable but discover sights hitherto unknown."
Dear facilitators,
Imagine a classroom with no restrictions of national borders, where children from schools worldwide mingle freely and learn about multiple cultures, a global dimension is added to the day to day activities, where students can easily interact, brainstorm and exchange their ideas on global issues. This is not a distant dream or a description of any futuristic classroom but something school worldwide (including ours!) are already doing on a platform called Epals. Over the past three years, our school has expanded its global outreach to over 12 schools across 7 different countries with more than 300+ students involved in collaborative projects across grades.
This is like pen pals but on a global scale. ePals offers pairing services for schools from around the world that are eager to learn from one another. Classrooms can access over 200 countries via live video chat, creating a unique learning community where young people experience a little bit of life in a foreign country while forming dialogues and lasting friendships. ePals represents the world's largest network of K-12 classrooms, and best of all, it’s free.
The site provides access to a variety of educational projects on a wide range of grade levels and course curriculums. On ePals, educators and students can partake in workshops and other collaborative experiences with their global partners. While learning to navigate the site might take some time, the benefits are worth it.
Though the site will probably benefit foreign language teachers more than anyone, ePals is in no way limited to that subject area. All educators will find value in a worldwide connection to other classrooms, and the projects they start will be limited only by their own creativity. Projects are based around useful content and experiences requiring teamwork, thinking, communication and digital literacy skills.
How does it work?
Teachers create a profile with a brief description about who they're hoping to connect with and why; for example, a grade eight class that would like to meet French-speaking students to collaborate on a global sustainable living project. History teachers can link up with French students to discuss the French Revolution; English teachers can talk to African students regarding Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart; the possibilities are endless. Teachers can search for partner classrooms by language, age, and keyword, and can also factor in region/country and class size. The system will also recommend classrooms. Once connected, classes can communicate through a private workspace on the site. However, be prepared to utilize this classroom connection for an extended period of time. The service is intended to forge lasting relationships between schools, not one-time quickie contacts.
After setting up a classroom, you can connect your students to pen pals and high-quality learning experiences. The program offers teacher to teacher and teacher to student communications, pen pal exchanges, Classroom Collaborative Projects, Spark!Lab Invent It Challenges, and more. In addition, you can click on the Collaborative Projects link to find several ready to use projects (Self Driving Cars, Hamilton, Habitats, Maps, Natural Disasters, Water, and others). To ensure legitimate educators are using ePals, site administrators review new members before they're approved and before they can interact with other users.
ePals is also extremely safe. All student email can be moderated by educators, and everything on ePals is monitored. Despite the site’s global reach, teachers need not fear inappropriate content in their forums, blogs and media sections. Educators can apply safety filters to each student in their virtual classroom. They can choose to moderate all student messages before they're sent, to receive copies of all messages once they're delivered, or just moderate messages that contain flagged content, or opt for open communication with no teacher moderation.
Creating a safe space for kids across the world to communicate and collaborate, ePals is a really neat idea that works. In addition to its collaborative nature, the site offers a significant amount of quality content. Kids can share ideas and success stories about trying to change the world, create inventions, practice their new language skills, and learn about topics such as poverty. Teachers can also access lesson plan ideas and other resources on the site. Kids can also express themselves on ePals by sharing their thinking with pen pals and adding video, images, and files to discussion boards. Other activities encourage kids to write and learn about different cultures. It's well-rounded content for kids, and there's a lot for teachers to explore, as well.
In my opinion, ePals is a great way for students and teachers around the world to work together, share ideas, practise language skills, learn more about different cultures, and overall have greater motivation for completing tasks. If students know that they are working with peers on the other side of the world, this can make working on a project more appealing. I think the methods for linking groups are great, and there are many resources that you can access and use in your regular classroom independently of any projects and collaborations you have ongoing.
Here are some screenshots from my own account showing my connections with other schools and collaborative project space we share. So far I have formed a network of 40+ educators on Epals from around the world and my past experience of exchanges with them has been insightful and enriching in every sense of the word.
Here's a tutorial video to take you through the site interface.
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