EPALS: EXTENDING YOUR CLASSROOM TO THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY Susan Cintra

What is ePal?  Connects classrooms across the world  Allows students to interact with other students who are working on similar/same projects or ideas  Allows teachers to control the encounters  Allows for collaboration between teachers across the world in all content areas.  Allows students to publish and share their work  Built in forums for students to share ideas  accounts can be set up for students

How to:  Go to  Click on “Join Now”  Type in under the “Adults” side  Continue filling out information, must include school information to proceed  Go to “Create Classroom Profile”  Fill out this information about your classes, you can always change it or adapt it later.

How to:  Go to “Add students to ePal roster”  This will allow you to add your students, when you get them. I made some generic students just to play with it.  For each classroom profile, you can add different students, so for instance 1 st period, 2 nd period, etc. This way different classes can work on different projects.

Get started:  Once you’ve created your profile, begin browsing profiles to see who is out there that your students can connect with.  Go to “Collaborate” tab you can search specific countries, topics, projects, or profiles.  Once you find one that’s interesting, click “Contact” to begin correspondence with them.

Posting Teacher Work:  If you would like to submit a project, go to “Projects” and click “Upload your own project” Follow the instructions from there.  If there are other teacher documents you want to share, go to “Teachers” and click “Share Teacher Work”  You can also post on teacher forums and discuss teacher-related ideas.

Posting Student Work:  Once your students are in and have activated accounts, they can publish their work, whether it be a website, audio, video, or documents.  Students go to “Student” tab, and click “Share Student work” to upload their work.  Once their work is posted, others can comment on the piece.

Other features:  There are a lot of other features with this website that can be worked into to any content. One is “My Minute to the World” where students submit a piece that is meant to be a minute in length discussing their message to the world.  Play around with this website and see how students from all over the world can connect, share ideas, collaborate, and publish their thoughts, ideas, and pieces.