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 * Description:** ePals is a networking platform designed to promote meaningful teaching and learning by connecting students, teachers and families from around the world. It allows those that are technologically savvy to use the world wide web effectively, encouraging collaboration on a variety of projects.
 * Overview:** ePals reaches 200 countries and territories across the globe. Projects are centered around meaningful content and experiences that require teamwork, sharing resources and collaboration. Students engage in authentic learning experiences with children from all around the world, and while doing so learn to work together and build essential skills needed for life in the real world. There are five key tabs on the site: projects, collaborate, teachers, students and families. Teachers can search by continent, or country, to try and find a classroom to collaborate with on a topic of choice. If no specific country is requested, a teacher can ask for any classroom that would be interested in partnering on a project. Email threads go back and forth on ePal until two classes sync up with one another; they communicate by choosing their language from the drop down menu. ePals will then translate for the teachers. Classrooms will often skype with one another, or become year long pen pals.
 * Classroom Use:** ePals is a fabulous way to create a culturally diverse classroom. For Social Studies I could partner with a class in South America to talk about how they celebrate holidays, for Science I could connect with a classroom in Asia that might be experiencing global warming in a different way than we are in the U.S., or for English we could read the same book (in two different languages) and create book reports together. Specifically, I will focus on the home countries of the diverse students within my classroom. This is a unique, and impactful way for students to learn from others around the world. What I like the most, however, is that this website doesn't make learning feel confined to our district. Networking sites like Facebook and Twitter make the social world feel smaller, but a networking site like ePals makes the learning world smaller.



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