ePals

         I recently discovered a fantastic collaborative website based on intercultural exchanges.  It is called "ePals" and it is educationally based.  While viewing this site, I came to identify the intentions that ePals' creators had in mind when creating this website.  It is clear that they intended to create a space online for educators and their students where they could interact with other educators and students through collaborative projects or email exchanges and therefore would learn about another way of life.  Students would not only be given the opportunity to learn about a new culture and contrast it with one's own, but students would also obtain insight into commonalities that he or she shares with someone from another culture as well as creating a meaningful project that would serve their learning.  I was ecstatic to see this collaborative learning on the Internet and how beneficial this site could be for my students and their experiences in learning about French-speaking cultures.

       While exploring ePals, I noticed that a lot of users had already posted creative projects and ideas for using ePals in the classroom.  I think that this is wonderful as educators who are unfamiliar with this website, such as myself, could benefit from ideas and projects that have already proven to be effective activities in regards to students' learning.  ePals has six main headings on their site that help guide users to resourceful tools that ePals has to offer.  These include: Focus Areas, Projects, Connect, Forums, How To, and ePals Tour.  The How To section is very helpful to users of ePals in that it provides answers to any questions that a user may have in regards to this website.  The ePals Tour provides additional resources to the site, including a blog that provides educators with ideas connected to the use of ePals that will help enrich students' learning and help in acheiving academic goals.  This section also gives up-to-date news regarding ePals achievements.  Users of ePals can connect with other classes through the subtopic Connect, where users have the opportunity to select a location on a map or to refine a search by searching for a particular language or area.  Users can also connect with classrooms by searching through Projects.  Here users can look through a list of projects and select one as a means of specifying a collaborative project.  Through Focus Areas, users are given additional resources and links to a specific topic.  Finally, Forums allows users to post requests, ideas, or other information regarding the use of ePals that will evoke interaction with other users.  Under the heading of Forums, there are sub-Forums related to specific users, such as: students, teachers, and family members, as well as Project based forums and Focus-Area forums.  This amazingly innovative and collaborative website is user-friendly and provides its users with an abundance of resources that makes the cultural exchange more productive.

      After exploring this website, I felt very inspired.  I often feel as a foreign language educator that my students are lacking in authentic experiences that I know would only make their learning more personal and therefore would provide them with more motivation in learning a foreign language.  It's difficult to provide students with face to face contact with native speakers of French when there are very few in their region.  The Internet however has provided foreign language educators with an abundance of authentic materials, and now through websites like ePals, Taking it Global, and iEarn, students have the opportunity to interact with other students of different cultures in a more personal way.  The following are a list of ideas that I have in regards to incorporating ePals into my classroom:
1. Getting to Know You
          Simply put, students would have the opportunity to use their foreign language skills in getting to know a person of the Target Language culture.  They could explore the similarities and differences that they have with one another and begin to form an online relationship that would be productive to not only their language learning but also to their cultural understanding.
2. Digital Storytelling
           Students would be able to refine their language skills by creating a story with a student of another culture.  They would be given an image with which they must create a narrative that would describe what is happening in the picture and who the characters are.  Perhaps they could collaborate with a student from another culture by both providing a different narrative and then responding to each other's story.  Or perhaps they could make a collaborative effort in creating a story together by taking turns writing.  One student could start the story and then the next student could continue the story and so on.
3.  Writing Prompts

           Students could be given a topic to share with another student from a foreign classroom based on cultural aspects, such as: family, holidays, traditions, school, free time, food, etc.  They would then be able to learn about an individual's experience in another culture as not everyone within a certain culture shares complete commonalities with each other.

         In regards to ePals, the sky really is the limit.  The interactional cultural experiences that this site offers is priceless in regards to students' cultural understanding as it provides personal insights into another way of life.  I am excited about sharing this program with my students and I look forward to the insights that they will gain as a result of our collaboration.