If you are a teacher and searching for a great place for your students to globally get connected I've found just the place! It is called ePals. EPals can open your students eyes to a whole new world. Experience new cultures without leaving the classroom, students can create project with students around the world, and collaborate. As a teacher you can set up an ePal group for your class by simply signing up for an account. After you've signed up there are a million options to choose from. It is important to choose the language your students will be speaking or writing, what grade or ages they are, what kind of project you are looking for, and choose a region you are interested in connecting with. For example, if you are an EFL teacher you may look for somewhere in France or Spain because students there will speak French or Spanish. Some projects you can choose from include: penpals, skype/video chat, or project workspace. EPals also has a feature where you can pick the subject area or choose from the Common Core standards which includes: Art/Music, Language-learning, Science, Reading, Writing, Social Studies, Math, Culture,Literature, Informational Text, Writing, Math, Speaking and Listening, and Language. The learning choices are ENDLESS. A class project I came across that caught my attention was a Discussion Circle Project with writing. Students can choose to work alone or collaborating with partners in the classroom and around the world. Students have the option to work and learn new things from their ePals from another region, who could possibly have new learning strategies or ideas the students could learn from. Another simple, but great idea is to connect to another region and become penpals with these students to learn more about their culture, community, region, what games they like to play, what music they listen to, etc. This is a good way for students to focus on writing, learning more about someone else's culture, and work on their communication skills. When students are a part of an online collaborative learning community, powerful learning takes place. Having the correct digital tools, like wikis, blogs, forums, email and media galleries, all in one place make for a rich learning environment ready for collaborative and interactive project work...
As a future ESL teacher I would be willing to try out many of the tools offered on ePals. It is important when choosing a project for your students to keep in mind their learning level. You don't want to pick an activity that would be intimidating for your students. Therefore, I would hypothetically say I have "newcomer" students. Therefore, a project I would be willing to try out with my students would probably first be penpals. I would like my students to practice with the English language and find penpals that are also practicing English as a second language. Then, the students are on the same level. While writing their penpals I wouldn't give the students too many guidelines. They could write as they wish, with my assistance, and get to know their "pal."After the students got good with penpaling we could move to video chatting or skyping because it would feel more real for the students and they can socialize a little while practicing English. Both penpaling and skyping are very authentic ways for learning. I also like the project workshops. It seems amazing for students around the world to collaborate on the same assignment, but this kind of activity would seem more appropriate after connecting with your ePals first. I highly suggest teachers find more ways to make their content AUTHENTIC and ePals is one of them!
