ePals Delivers Free E-Mail, Blogging for Schools
Education technology provider ePals is making its formerly subscription-based services available to schools free of charge. These services, available to all schools around the world, include SchoolMail, SchoolBlog, and In2Books.
"From a district perspective, this is a big win-win," said Stan Salagaj, director of instructional technology at Newark Public Schools in New Jersey, in a statement issued with the ePals announcement. "We get to acquire a leading K-12 designed collaborative tool suite and, in the process, eliminate budget constraints, eRate paperwork and the application process to apply for partial government technology subsidies, saving us time and money."
SchoolMail is an integrated, teacher-monitored e-mail system that includes 72 language-translation pairs, spell checking, virus and spam filters, and file-sharing capabilities.
SchoolBlog is a literacy education tool tat offers teacher-supervised message boards that encourage students "to express their ideas, collaborate with other students and teachers, and involve parents in a secure online environment."
In2Books is an online literacy curriculum based around a dialogue between a student and an adult mentor designed to improve student achievement on standardized tests and increase critical thinking and writing proficiency.
All three of these services are now available free from ePals, which is used currently by about 325,000 students and educators around the world. All of ePals' tools, according to the company, are" optimized for policy-managed security standards so that each school district or campus can regulate student interactions with the site based on its own specific Internet policies." More information can be found below.
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About the author: David Nagel is the executive editor for 1105 Media's online education technology publications, including THE Journal and Campus Technology. He can be reached at dnagel@1105media.com.
Proposals for articles and tips for news stories, as well as questions and comments about this publication, should be submitted to David Nagel, executive editor, at dnagel@1105media.com.