ePals

In ePals Global Community, you can find a classroom by narrowing results according to region. There are three types of collaboration: email exchange, skype or video chat, and project workspace. Also, you can search by key words. There are a lot of projects which are categorized into types like culture, music, math, science, reading, writing and so on. Those projects can last for weeks, or just one semester.

There are two projects related to endangered species. One Indian project was approved on July 6, 2013. It says that enthusiastic Grade 4 students in India want to connect with an equally enthusiastic class and are waiting to explore their Saving Endangered Species Project with partners. So if my class is also interested in this project, we can match and work together in this project. It is great for my students to work with partners around the world.

Another project that was approved on December 17, 2012 is from an international school in Shanghai, China. They will record a video of students explaining/doing warm up exercises. Then the receiving class will try their workout and record a new exercise/warm up for them to try. This is a great resource for collecting some ideas of warm-up activities. Teacher can learn and share with each other from all around the world.

The best way to learn culture is to learn from a person from that culture. So I can use projects about culture to let students find their partners and get in touch with them through email or skype. In this way, students from this program can exchange and learn from each other. In addition, there are activities, games, videos which can be used to explore cultures around the world.

One most useful feature is the teaching resources. Although a lot of them are not free, I can download some of them which are free if I log in. Those resources are categorized into different grades, prices and languages. For example, there is a packet called “‘Dragon them back to school’” which is designed to help teacher bring all of the individuals together into a unified team. There is a description about the contents of this packet. I can first review the description and then decide whether I will download it or not.  This packet is really interesting. It includes some interview questions, some activities with colorful pictures and students can really be motivated in completing those tasks.