Your Name and Title:
Rita Oates, PhD, Vice President, Education
School or Organization Name:
ePals
Co-Presenter Name(s):
Area of the World from Which You Will Present:
USA/Eastern Time Zone
Language in Which You Will Present:
English
Target Audience(s):
Curriculum leaders in social studies, language arts, science, foreign language; lead teachers; school site administrators; classroom teachers interested in adding a global dimension to learning for the first time.
Short Session Description (one line):
Find ways to engage students in authentic communication with students in other locations using free tools and projects from ePals, the largest K12 social learning network in the world..
Full Session Description (as long as you would like):
Project-based learning on a global scale is possible using the free resources and tools provided by ePals. Learn how to join the ePals Global Community and find partners for your classroom or students. See how you can start global collaboration with several free ePals projects, especially The Way We Are and Digital Storytelling. Do science projects with partner classes in areas such as weather, water, and habitat. You can sign up your students for safe and protected ePals SchoolMail, featuring TRUSTe certification of child privacy, with translation to 58 languages. In addition, see the projects that other teachers have created, including some that have been ongoing for more than a decade, using multiple different technology tools.
Your K12 students can participate as global citizens in the ePals Student Forums, where they can ask and answer questions that interest them: Are there homeless people where you live? Do glasses make you a nerd? What's the best game for Xbox? Reading answers from students from many other countries -- translated to 58 languages -- provides immediacy and authentic communication to increase student engagement and learning.
ePals Pages contributed by the Smithsonian Institution, Common Sense Media, SnagFilms, IRA, Microsoft Partners in Learning, and others, are all free. These provide rich, educationally relevant content for
View student work in the ePals Student Media Gallery: http://bit.ly/StMedia Items here are viewed by 27 million individuals monthly and vetted before posting for K12 appropriate content. See what students in Senegal, India, Turkey and Australia tell about life in their countries, their opinions, their wishes and dreams.
Join the largest and fastest growing global community of K12 learners, with 700,000 classrooms in 200 countries. Everything in this session is free for K12 students, teachers and parents to use.
Training to use ePals is free too, through a combination of webinars, tutorials, and user-created content.
Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:
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