E-pals

= Communication Tool: = Group Members: Ryan Bean, Amy Blair


 * Screenshot or logo**



Brief introduction of the tool
Epals is a way for teachers to meet online, discuss teaching, and share lesson plans. This website is full of different assignments and opinions from teachers all around the globe. Epals's subjects take a large variety of range as well as seasonal topics such as the Olympics or Black History Month. This site can also be used to talk to classrooms from around the globe. For instance, a teacher in Italy could connect to a classroom in Kenya and share lesson plans or learn about eachothers culture.


 * ===//Advantages of the tool//===

__Efficiency__- Epals is a great time saver for teachers and students alike. Teachers can go to this site and find lesson plans posted from all over the world quickly and on their own time. Students can go here and Skype from students around the world instantly. This site is free too, so it could save the school some money on software or hardware for similar programs. __Effectiveness__ - This website is very effective in teaching science and culture to students and boosting awareness. For instance, if a student was video chatting with a classroom from Japan, they would find that very interesting. Epals has lots of lesson plans made by people all over the world, so plan that a teacher mnight choose to do that is on Epals will have a little bit of everyones culture built right in. __Enhance__ - Rarely do people get a chance to conect to people like this. Rather than being confiend to a district or area, Epals is giving student and teachers a chance to get out of their district and find people everywhere. This site is also heavily monitored by administrators to keep spam and other school inapropriate things off.


 * ===//Disadvantages (limitations) of the tool//===

This program sounds almost flawless, but of course it has its down turns. For instance probably the largest problem is the language barrier. Sure it would be great to chat with people in Africa..if they knew English. This problem could be turned around however to help benefit foreign language classes. Another problem would be time. There is no guarentee how often teachers will be posting blogs or new lesson plans so it could be a while before anything new comes up. Time zones also come into play. For instance all over Epals forums are posts from students from Japan looking to chat with Americans. But if its noon here in America what time would it be in Japan?

Application of the tool in your subject area
As teachers, this tool can be used to connect with other teachers and get their ideas on ways to present certain lessons. Teachers can talk to one another, answer each others questions, and share things such as bulletin board ideas and lesson plans. Teacher s could also show their students how to use E-pals so that they can talk to other students from their own school or another. They can ask each other or other teachers specific homework questions and receive homework help. For example, when presenting the class with a new research project, you can show them examples of projects completed on E-pals so they have an idea of what is expected of them. They can then go into the site on their own time if they ever need to review the examples again.

Find a tutorial video on YouTube
media type="youtube" key="Gz5xZQYOb8g" height="344" width="425"

//List of key features showed in the ScreenToaster ://
How to correctly and successfully become a user of E-pals Where to find examples of students work on a particular topic How to connect with other classrooms

Useful Resources
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLcEPG8Sw1k http://www.e-palworld.co.uk/ http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/etowe-228224-2009-10-epals-tutorial-education-ppt-powerpoint/