Social Networking | News

Pen Pal Kids Club Offers Free Classroom Subscriptions

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 04/02/12

Pen Pal Kids Club, an international social network for students in grades K-8, has begun offering free classroom subscriptions.

The site allows users to communicate with other students around the world using digital postcards, which can be automatically translated to and from English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Italian, Chinese, and German, with more languages to come.

To ensure privacy, students can create a classroom avatar for the entire group, then communicate with pen pals found and approved by their teacher.

Other features of Pen Pal Kids Club include:

• Six educational games designed for a range of age and skill levels covering world history, language, geography, government, economics, and social studies;
• Online access to Encyclopaedia Britannica for Kids;
• No advertisements;
• Built-in parental and educator controls and compliance with Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

The free classroom subscriptions will be available for as long as teachers want to use them. According to information released by the company, "It is PPKC's hope that when the kids go home they will want to have their own subscriptions and that will help us to support the expense of this safe site."

Individual subscriptions for home use are $2.99 each month with the first month free, or $29.99 per year.

More information is available at penpalkidsclub.com.