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What's HOT 

Key Pals

01/09/2003  

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  • ePALS Classroom Exchange, the world's largest wired K-12 classroom network free service currently lists more than 17,000 classrooms who use the site to form international friendships and exchange information and ideas. 
  • Mighty Media's Mighty Mentors! Our new service enables teachers to mentor one another via email. Mighty Mentors can help you find a mentor or mentee for a short- or long-term mentoring partnership. Teachers can help other teachers improve their teaching techniques, troubleshoot classroom problems, and more. Mighty Mentors is a free public service; there is no charge to participate.
  • Classroom Connect - Send a mail to info@classroom.net and make "send keypals" your message and they will send you an assortment of teachers/classes currently looking for keypals - fast and fresh (it took me three minutes to get a reply when I tried Tuesday night to make sure it was still up and running) and current
  • Internet's Project Registry -find projects from across the globe to bring into your classroom.
  • Dave's ESL Email Connection - Part of Dave's ESL Cafe, this site offers the opportunity to find keypals with students around the world for your ESL children; simply type in the required info and post, or browse through the listings already up (as recent as February 23rd) to see who's out there that might suit your needs
  • Email and Project Ideas -Teaching 'N Technology  is a database of technology-related lesson plans developed by Florida educators.
  • ePals - "Over 850,000 students and teachers from 11,237 self-registered schools and classrooms, in 96 countries, speaking 93 languages are now participating. Each month, up to 1,000 or more new classrooms register with ePALS and begin corresponding with others schools" - truly impressive
  • ETNI - The Israeli English Teacher's Network with very current postings of classes looking for others to correspond with; announcements from Kindergarten classes through High Schools as of February 7th
  • Rigby Heinemann Keypals Heinemann Interactive -lists of teachers and students 
  • Houghton Mifflin's Keypals and Correspondents Exchange - I guess here in the states there aren't too many companies more familiar to teachers than textbook publishers, so if you're looking for an old reliable as your base of operations you may very well feel comfortable here among the nearly 50 different links that are offered for keypal activities
  • How to Find Penpals - Loogootee West's step by step suggestions on how to go about finding a keypal or keypals online and nurturing a safe, constructive relationship; very basic and to the point - be sure to view "Safety Tips" and "Suggested Topics and Activities"
  • IECC - Intercultural Email Classroom Connections (I just call them St. Olaf's because it's run out of St. Olaf's College) is a group of listservs which address different online collaborative projects for teachers and students; for penpals subscribe to IECC (for K-12) by sending an email to IECC-REQUEST@STOLAF.EDU with "subscribe" as the message - you'll be hearing from fresh faces from all over the world looking for keypal relationships
  • Internet Keypals - http://www.4teachers.org/kidspeak/aberdeen/ Reflective article on 8 girls from New Jersey who had keypals, their ups and downs, pleasures and pitfalls expressed here for the benefit of the rest of us as we begin to dabble in this fascinating yet unfamiliar forum - a must read
  • IT'S Magazine - http://its-online.com/meet.html Offbeat magazine for teachers of English offers the opportunity for both students and teachers to look for keypals, register as a prospective keypal and even look for traditional postal penpals
  • Keypal Finder - http://www.ziplink.net/users/tlipcon/keypals/ This site actually asks for some very rudimentary information and then helps find a pen pal for you based on the info you provide; open to "all ages," so you might want to be a little more careful with children toying with this one, but a nice, neat way to go about finding a cyber pal
  • Keypals Club - http://www.mightymedia.com/keypals/ Mighty Media hosts this site which emphasizes safety for teachers and students while enjoying a keypals experience; they require parental permission, screen the email, and provide complete privacy for all participants in their program - nice interface makes the process easy and functional
  • Keypals Club International - http://www.worldkids.net/clubs/kci/ Created by a twelve year old and her friends, this site is definitely set up for pre-teens with lots of opinion polls, digital post cards and homepages for each of its 12,000+ members; password protected with an emphasis on net safety and netiquette - very slick looking format!
  • Kidlink Network - http://www.kidlink.org/english/general/overview.html Here's a dynamic site that offers interactive projects, conferencing, listservs, online art exhibits, a private IRC chat room and a MUSH (virtual environment) all for kids aged 10-15 to express themselves and experience others from more than 125 different countries around the world; languages seem to be no problem as they have a number of major tongues provided for on their site - too cool
  • Kidpub Keypals - http://www.kidpub.org/kidpub/keypals/keypal-search.html
    A searchable database of kids looking for     correspondents both in the US (state by state) or around the world; simply type in your specs and then have them return a list of suitable matches for your consideration - one on one matches
  • Kidworld - http://www.bconnex.net/~kidworld/keypals4.htm Kids post their name and interests individually; simple click on their name and a form appears to send email to them - nice format if you have only 1-5 kids who you want to get involved with electronic correspondence or if you don't have a mail client on your school computers but you still want to try keypals
  • Student Letter Exchange - http://www.pen-pal.com/ Use Internet technology to find a traditional penpal for snail mail correspondence; register for free (to ensure security) and wait to hear from your mystery pen pal (it's a surprise) - not a bad way to get your class involved one on one while catering to all their different needs and interests.....and this company's been in business since the 1930s, so you know they're reputable
  • Surf-E-Mates - http://www.ozkidz.gil.com.au/rm/student/surfe.html It's Australian, so don't let the title fool you, this is a moderated site to ensure its safety for children; covering the U.S., Australia, Greece and Canada, these listings are for one on one correspondence - ideal for those one or two students who are ready for some enrichment beyond your four walls
  • The Global Schoolhouse
  • Ideas for Collaborative E-mail and WWW Language Learning article by Lawrence B. Davies