ePals Acquires Children's Literature Publisher -- THE Journal

Collaboration

ePals Acquires Children's Literature Publisher

By Mike Hohenbrink
12/06/11

ePals, a provider of educational technology products, will acquire Carus Publishing, the parent company of Cricket Magazine Group, Cobblestone Publishing, and Open Court Publishing.

Through its subsidiaries, Carus publishes 14 magazine titles covering subjects such as science, history, culture, and fiction, hundreds of books, and mobile and Web apps.

As part of the acquisition, ePals will gain a subscriber base of more than 300,000 people and 80,000 institutional customers, including an estimated 30 percent of American middle schools and 3,800 libraries, according to information provided by ePals. The move will push ePals to more than 600,000 paid subscriptions and more than 7 million users registered with ePals in more than 200 countries and territories.

Currently, ePals products include:

The ePals Global Learning Community, a free social learning network for use in K-12 classrooms;
SchoolMail 365, a cloud-based e-mail solution featuring automated COPPA, CIPA, and FERPA compliance;
The ePals LearningSpace communication and collaboration platform;
In2Books, a curriculum-based online mentoring program that pairs students in grades 3-5 with pen pals for teacher-monitored communication about texts; and
The ePals Distributed Learning Platform.

"The Carus family mission has always been to foster and reinforce communities of literacy, whatever the medium," said Blouke Carus, chairman of Carus Publishing. "Now that literacy is broadening to new platforms and new forms of literate community are emerging, we realized we needed to partner with a company that had deep expertise in these new media and new community platforms. In ePals, we are fortunate to have found not only that expertise but a like-minded educational philosophy and the same commitment to communities of literacy across all age groups."

"The combination of ePals and Carus provides all of the pieces necessary to create a 24/7 dynamic learning environment in which students from around the corner or around the world, as well as their teachers, parents and mentors, can safely collaborate with each other around high quality content," said Miles Gilburne, chairman and CEO of ePals.

For more information on ePals Global Community, visit epals.com. Corporate information on ePals can be found at corp.epals.com. Visit musemag.com for more information about Carus Publishing.

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