Connect to a World of Pen Pals
ePALS is a worldwide online classroom community, bringing together over 28,000 K-12 classrooms in 194 countries. The service provides its users with free collaborative tools, such as teacher-monitored e-mail and instant language translation. ePALS aims to facilitate cooperative learning between classrooms around the world.
When registering with ePALS, teachers give descriptions of their classrooms and the types of projects they are interested in undertaking. They can then search for other classrooms with similar criteria, and make contact. Once two classrooms have gotten in touch, they can determine their academic goals for the correspondence. The goal may be to improve students’ reading skills, to learn about different countries, to learn a language, or to increase cultural understanding. ePALS, Easton, CT, (203) 372-5008, www.epals.com.
This article originally appeared in the 09/01/2000 issue of THE Journal.