ePals 101: Bring Global Collaboration and Communication Into Your Classroom

Statewide projects with ePals Maine: 150,000 students Wisconsin: 800,000 Pennsylvania: 1.8 million students, Classroom For the Future Kansas: 400,000 students, on the state’s KanEd portal Colorado: 800,000 students through eNet Colorado

3 Learners Connect, Communicate and Collaborate  Largest K-12 social learning network globally, reaching more than 25 million students, teachers and parents in 200 countries  Leading provider of cloud-based, policy-managed and social learning solutions for schools and districts CONNECTCOMMUNICATECOLLABORATE 25 Million Students & Teachers Worldwide Next Generation and Communications Social Learning Environment for Collaboration and Community Largest Community of Connected, Global Classrooms

4 ePals is Where Learners Connect ePals’ solutions enable schools to deploy ePal’s safe and collaborative next generation learning – all accessed through the SchoolSafe® education desktop CONNECT COMMUNICATE COLLABORATE  Largest social learning network globally. Links all ePals students and teachers to participate in collaborative projects, join community discussions and connect with other classrooms in a safe environment. Distributed Learning Platform CREATE  Enterprise-grade, cloud and communications specifically designed for K- 12. Robust policies set by the school govern all communications and manage access to third-party learning applications.  Social learning environment for community and collaboration. Designed for project-based learning and group collaboration in virtual workspaces across a full suite of safe social media tools. ePals’ SchoolSafe desktop is where students and educators go daily to connect, communicate, collaborate and discover content and apps in a safe, policy-managed environment ePals’ Solutions SchoolSafe Desktop Unifies Solutions LEARN  Curriculum-based literacy program matches students with e-mentors to enhance reading, writing and critical thinking skills. First in a series of learning applications built on the ePals platform.  Provides partners with access to ePal’s education cloud platform capabilities, enabling them to rapidly build and deploy policy-managed, collaborative, next generation learning applications surfaced on the SchoolSafe desktop.

Connecting 700,000 classrooms in 200 countries & territories 2,500+ new schools/month Policy managed and Teacher supervised Trusted pipeline to the world’s classrooms TRUSTe certification

Not “one more thing” -- but a new way of advancing learning goals Spelling or vocabulary words homework –You assign to write in sentences –Instead, include words in an to a partner Students can get credit for posting a response to a question in the Student Forum Encourage students to read in the Student Forums on topics that interest them

Most Popular Long-term Matches #1 English as a Second Language teachers outside an English-speaking country want to pair their students with students in English countries #2 Teachers of foreign language want to pair their students with native speakers (i.e., teacher of Spanish wants to have Spanish speakers in Mexico)

Spanish class in S. Korea

One- exchanges too! Students create 10 questions for a classroom in a country they are studying in Geography, things “not in the book” Students search global community and find five potential partner classes Students copy profiles into a Word file Students submit questions and profiles to teacher Teacher writes to the other teachers, pasting in the student questions…..

Finding a global partner Search by map Search by classroom Search by project Look at the “new schools” scrolling on the home page of ePals for the newest profiles OR search in Project Forums or Teacher Forums for very specific matches

Starting a Collaboration using ePals in 3 easy steps: Step 1: Come up with a GREAT idea! (or choose one of our projects, such as The Way We Are) Step 2: Find Partners from profiles or search the Project Forums Step 3: Create a Plan and Timeline or Calendar of and Events (use example from our projects)

Project-Based Learning Free to use, adapt Developed jointly with National Geographic Also feature great teacher-created projects

Types of Global Projects Empathy for others…visits, pen pals Finding new ways to enrich and engage…global citizenship Desire for social justice…peace studies, fundraising, activism

Start with a Specific Project

Great teacher-created projects

ePals Teacher Ambassador Contest Winners

Viewing audience in the millions

How Tos, Manuals Under Help from home page