ePals

This week, we explored an online network for teachers and students where they can connect with many other students and teachers from around the world: ePals. I should admit that it took me a while to figure out how it works, and I made use of e-Pals is Global Education in order to see how people are using the website. You will see comments from other users on the right side of this page.

There are a lot of things you can do on ePals. You can find connections from around the world to collaborate, and while looking for connections, you can narrow your search results by choosing the country, language, student age group, average class size, subjects, interests, grades taught, and specializations. I was really  happy to see that there are many connections from my home country, Turkey. If I had known about ePals when I was in Turkey, I would have definitely used it while teaching English to my students. It would provide us with opportunities to connect with native speakers of English, and participate in projects with classrooms from around the world. Needless to say, this would contribute so much to my students' cultural awareness and communication skills in many ways.

I especially loved the Explore Experiences feature. I liked the idea of School Swap project, where you can have your students partner with a classroom from another country. Through this project, students will be discovering the similarities and differences between their classrooms, activities, campuses. As a culminating project, it is suggested that the students create a video presenting facts and info about their partner school. It is a very interesting project where students will have the opportunity to communicate with native speakers of the target language and use this info while creating their video. I also loved the Taste of Culture project, where students exchange recipes and examine what the ingredients tell them about the other culture’s location and climate. Food is always fun, and you can use this project when you teach imperatives in English as the recipes always have directions.