BP2 ePals
Since I began working toward achieving my Educational Media and Design Technology Masters, I have been enveloped in a multitude of new invigorating technological tools. I have become addicted, and I mean addicted-pretty soon, I expect one of those counselors from Intervention will knock at my door, drag me off to some sort of rehabilitation center (I will be the one shouting-“WAIT! I NEED MY CCCOOMMMMPUUTTER!”), but until then I shall fall into the emerging Web 2.0 programs that continue to be handed to me in the most inconspicuous ways. This week, I was gifted the mother load-and I have been immersed ever since-my afternoon has dissipated, vanished, and I am not even the least bit scathed for its disappearance; instead, I am engrossed into a world of possibilities for my students and me.
ePals: www.epals.com
Wow! Funny how powerful that three letter word can be-just plain, WOW! If you capitalize it, the emotional power intensifies it even more. Maybe what is needed here is a little bit of the old batman comic POW? Some onomatopoeia would really add to the imagery too. Well, whatever it is that is needed to encourage you to stop and read this post, pretend I just engaged you, because, this is another one of those things that you should just stop, read, and investigate. I have been inspired-drawn in-excited, impressed, eager. I feel like it is my birthday or maybe even Christmas! Through researching a plethora of academic articles for my Literature Review, I stumbled across a new toy that until this week has just waited patiently in a word document for me to breathe some life into it-epals.
On the surface, it might appear a bit bland, dry and you may even just skim past it, mentally make note of checking it out at a later date, but first views are about as beneficial as a mosquito to a person-irritating, problematic, and sometimes seriously dangerous. So, although on first glance, I wasn’t too impressed, I stopped, read, and investigated for hours! I truly became lost in the potential, the projects, the ideas, the benefit to my students. I am in! I set up classes tonight, assigned my students access, created email accounts, and began the search for projects that would help feed my continual desire for technology and learning. I LOVE this! I thought Prezi, Xtranormal, iMovie, GarageBand, and Podcasts were the best thing since chocolate (and if you know me, you know that is a huge accomplishment), but they have been surpassed by ePals. Don’t get me wrong-they are still at the top of my list, but now they are the tools to help me supplement this new realm of learning on ePals. They will assist in my endeavor to conquer student inhibition and lackadaisical interest.
Digging Deeper-Technology and the 21st Century Standards
I began to peel back the layers of this site, and the power just burst forth. ePals is an education technology company that provides a safe social learning networks (SLN). The site facilitates a safe and secure arena to build educational and global communities through digital content, establishing and encouraging 21st Century Standards, and immersing students in real world scenarios with other countries. Teachers and parents are able to create various projects and post to create a realm of collaboration. The audience is focused on kindergarten through twelfth grade, and it is partnered with National Geographic and the Smithsonian. Since its inception in 2007, ePals has become a leader in children’s educational publishing, and it includes brands such as Cricket® and Cobblestone®. Originally, it began as In2Books®. The ePals Corporation continues to create award-winning products such as: Global Community, SchoolMail®365, and LearningSpace®, AND it is FREE!!!! Enough rambling on about its birth and coming of age phases-it is time to get to the GOOD stuff!
A World of Opportunities
Besides the resources in the image above, this site has some amazing attributes. Students can write collaborative stories, play critical thinking and analysis games with students from other countries, blog, enter into contests and programs where students are presented with real world problems, and they create plans to assist in solving the crisis, collaboratively. They can interact via email globally and exchange cultural information, analyze and compare worlds, participate in discussion forums about life, literature, math, science, history, technology-anything you could imagine benefitting your students and your children is housed in ePals-a click away from reality. The most time consuming component is setting up your student accounts and that took about 20 minutes-and this may have been because of the actions of the operator (hmmm-wonder who that person was) that kept closing the add students window. You set up your profile and your class profile in minutes, and then you wait (site says 24 hours, but my profile and classes were approved within a few hours) for the approval. You are not frozen from access while you are awaiting approval, you start searching for projects to join. The search tool is amazing as well! You can really delineate what topic, idea, country, grade level-everything before you hit search, and you get a list that provides exact matches-and you have a lot to choose from once the search is complete. The information about the projects are right there including the country and class information-I have already joined 4 projects, and my students will be working with France, Germany, Poland, and Oregon.
Site Navigation
- Student Accounts: Toolbox on left side bar
- Setting: Toolbox on left side bar
- Classrooms: Toolbox on left side bar
- Managing Students: Toolbox on left side bar
- Adding Students: Toolbox on left side bar
- Activity Feeds: Top center of screen-instantly see students posts-monitored-inappropriate responses will not be posted and you will be notified
- Mail, Active Projects, Saved Projects: Middle of home screen-in tab format
- Monitored Mail-Middle of home screen-in tab format (you see what your students email to other people-and this is monitored by ePals too)
- Finding a Classroom-Top toolbar
- Join a Project, Start a Project-Top toolbar
- Learning Centers-Top toolbar
- Discussion Forums-Top toolbar (under More)
I could continue on and on about what is where, but the reality is that everything is at your fingertips-it is easy to access, easy to understand, and easy to implement, but in case you worry or you get confused or aren’t sure, no need to stress-there are youtube videos available for navigating ePals, but I don’t think you will need them. I can’t wait until Monday to reveal this site and the projects with my students! 🙂 Come join me-let’s take over the world, safely on ePals. 🙂
Phrontistery 
Great review!! epal sounds very interesting to me. I’m very impressed with its potential. I would like to explore this in the context of theological studies
The first thing I noticed when reading this was your enthusiasm. If you can share that with your students and fellow teacher, this will get off to a great start and grow quickly. The second thing was your ability to write, I really envy that.
I have one question. How are you planning to use this tool?
🙂 I have already started utilizing it. The kids are quite ecstatic. I answered requests for project collaboration. Currently, we are working with a school in Poland. The beginning phase requires students to create questionnaires for their assigned collaborator. The questionnaires are about student interests, life, holidays celebrated, school participation, and etc. This provides students with some insight regarding their new partner, and helps to create an understanding for culture and creating a comfort with communication. We are having them email with each other for a couple of weeks and then we are going to give each student an excerpt from a novel and a poem. My student and the student from Poland will receive a crocodoc link and they will both be able to annotate these documents. I will upload the novel excerpt and the teacher in Poland will upload the poem. Both students will annotate the texts based on literary elements included-from their analysis they will decide what theme appears in both the excerpt and the poem. Then they will create a joint Prezi where both English and Polish are utilized. We are planning on utilizing this kind of collaboration on other projects as well. One thing is looking at the appeals (ethos, logos, and pathos)in famous US speeches and Poland speeches-not that Poland or the US can speak-or can they??? 🙂
Catherine,
I could not be help to get a chuckle when you talked about “being engrossed into the world of possibilities for your students and yourself.” I can really related to that as I have found that to be my experience as well since being in the Education Media Design and Technology program at Full Sail University. I found your review to be very helpful especially your discussion regarding ePals and encouraging the 21st Century Standards by as you say, immersing the students in real world scenarios internationally.
I work in a context where the leadership is connected with others internationally, however I have been looking for a tool that will allow our students to collaborate with students from organizations we are connected with. Your review listed various ways and opportunities of how ePals can serve educators in the field.
Your review was very thorough. As you mentioned at the end of your review, you could continue on. Have you considered including a YouTube or podcast testimonial from your students sharing their experiences with collaborating with international students?
You might look into inserting a specific sample project, a link to that project in order to get a clearer idea of the opportunities possible with ePals. Another suggestion could be to make a tutorial on how to use ePals effectively.
Catherine,
Your excitement over ePals.com is highly infectious! You have delivered a terrific review of the website, providing us with a comprehensive overview of the program’s features and several great project ideas. I also enjoyed the humor in your writing. Well done!
Will your ePals projects represent your first global collaborations? If so, what ideas do you have for collaboration projects? Is there a particular country or region you are interested in connecting with? If you have participated in global collaborations before, what types of projects were they?
Have you considered including reviews or testimonials from teachers who have already used ePals? I truly believe that your review will inspire everyone who reads it to visit ePals for themselves. The testimonials may simply add an additional spark of interest and further evidence of ePals awesomeness.
Perhaps you could include additional web resources to connect with your global colleagues once your collaborations have begun. You may want to consider a Skype video chat with your friends in Poland and have a face-to-face meeting with them. If the time difference makes it too difficult to pull off, maybe a conversation tool like VoiceThread (www.voicethread.com) would work well for you. VoiceThread will allow your students and the group in Poland to leave comments in video, audio, or text format whenever it is convenient for them to participate in the conversation. From what I have read and seen, ePals facilitates plenty of communication between partners. My suggestions are provided for possible project enhancement.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your review of ePals and wish you the best of luck with your projects. Thank you for sharing your enthusiasm with us. I am inspired!
Dear Stuart and Ken-stop already. LOL Your ideas and suggestions are FABULOUS! The addiction has been fed, and now I have new tools to investigate and feed my habit-Intervention folks-too late now-you can’t save me, and I blame that on Ken and Stuart. 🙂 I can’t wait to check out http://www.voicethread.com-I have already signed up for Speaker too-so you see, there is no saving me now! I am going to make a note for when the folks show up with those pretty white jackets with the lovely belts to not call y’all because of the amazing insight, ideas, and advice you have provided-I am inspired even more. Watch out world-I’m taking over-one technological tool at a time. Muhahahahahahaha
Thanks for the introduction to ePals. I’m going to try it out to connect with classrooms worldwide from our base in Rurrenabaque in the Bolivian Amazon. Students, parents and educators all appreciate the safety and security that ePals seems to provide. Let’s hope! I’ll let you know how it works out.
Howdy are using WordPress for your site platform? I’m new to the blog world but I’m trying to get started and create my
own. Do you need any html coding expertise to make your own blog?
Any help would be really appreciated!
You do not need any html coding to create a blog with wordpress. You can utilize it, but I would suggest just utilizing the ‘word’ mode. You can create a free account-just try it and see if you like it. 🙂