Epals for Education

Epals for Education

 

EPals is one of the innovative education organizations in the world to connect people worldwide together. It is an online platform for both students and teachers. Students can use the search tools to seek ideal partners to join a teaching project in which they cooperate from global aspects, learn from each other, and reach a consensus. Teachers are able to create a project for students to broadcast his/her thoughts or teach practical skills, solely or together with others. Also, They can gather together to form a learning a group or community to discuss opinions, share files and ask questions. EPal also provides teaching resources, such as textbook, on specific subjects and topics and edublogs for teachers to express and share their thoughts on teaching and learning.

One project in the EPals is seeking cultural e-mail exchange partner for 3rd grade class. They seek and then afford their students opportunities to correspond with other 3rd grade classes around the world. Students can learn about what the difference or similarity is between their lives and other children around the world including China and Brazil. By e-mail exchange, the communication skill and teamwork spirits of the students are cultivated. Another project is group of 50 USA students aging from 11-17. They want to find pen pals with students from other places. Through e-mail exchange, they will gain knowledge and experiences of daily lives and culture of students around the word. Contrary to the previous project, these students need to work in groups to perform a PowerPoint presentation to show what they have discovered.

In practical teaching, I will create a cultural exchange project for my students online and make each of them seek a learning partner from other regions in the world. Each student and his/her partner form a group to learn together, discuss some topics, and solve questions for each other. For different groups, students will make the presentation in the class to tell what they have learned in the daily discussions with his/her partner and find the differences and reasons in their thoughts on the same topics. At the same time, I will invite a foreign teacher on the ePals site to join our online class, which provides the students a different horizon to understand global culture.