Social Learning | News

ePals Enhances Global Learning Network

• By Leila Meyer
• 06/27/12

ePals Corporation has announced a new version of its social learning network, ePals Global Learning Network, at the ISTE 2012 conference in San Diego.

ePals provides an online classroom-matching and collaboration service, where students in different schools, states, or countries can work together on projects in private, customizable group workspaces. ePals features a library of existing projects, which teachers can use or customize, or teachers can create their own projects from scratch. According to a press release from the company, the projects in the library address collaboration, digital literacy, and critical thinking and writing skills in alignment with state, national, and international standards, including the Common Core ELA State Standards.

New or enhanced features of ePals include:

• MatchSense, which uses member profiles, goals, and interests to automatically recommend classroom partners;
• Dynamic Search, which helps teachers find matching classrooms based on search criteria such as interests, language, geographic location, age or skill level, number of students, collaboration goals, and project duration;
• Collaboration Tables, which helps members find or create projects and invite others to join;
• Private, customizable web 2.0 workspaces for each project, including a blog, media gallery, and discussion forum, which are accessible only to teachers and students who belong to the group;
• Expanded project library for finding and creating new teacher-created, classroom-ready projects, as well as those from content partners and other members;
• Template-driven structure to help teachers adopt, customize, or create projects from scratch;
• Multidisciplinary student-centric learning centers for independent learning, that feature standards-aligned content, activities, multimedia, and teacher resources; and
• Game Center, where students from around the world can play strategy and logic games together.

Further information about the ePals Global Learning Network is available at the ePals site.