Global Collaboration Part 1

Among listed sites for global cooperation, I explored ePals and Talkingitglobal.

ePALS is not only the place where you can chat with people around the world and make friends. More importanly, it's an educational website which connects students, teachers and parents around the world for cross-cultural and interactive projects. ePals provides learning units, instructional resources, practices and member-created projects all arranged by topic. This makes it easier for the teacher to match her classroom with another by finding whoever is intereted in writing about the same topic. One unique feature of ePals is that families are invloved. Many parents left messages there looking for epals/penpals for their children, which I think greatly encourages global cooperation.

Talkingitglobal uses an online social network aimed primarily at youth to raise awareness and discussion on a number of global issues such as animal rights and sustainable development. It also encourages youth to take action that affects their local and global communities.

Both websites provide ways for students and teachers to communicate around the world much more quickly. People can make friends, practice writing and get to know other countries and cultures. I like both of them.

From my own experience, it is often difficult to motivate EFL students to readand write. ePals can serve as a platform to motivate and inspire studentsin language learning. By integrating a letter-exchange program in the classroom,students will be excited about literacy learning. As a teacher, I can selecte-pals for my students and develop real-life writing and learning experiences forthem. Students learn the format of a friendly letter and the parts of an e-mailmessage. With carefulselection of an e-pal group, students can also learn about other cultures,languages, and geographic areas that align with the curriculum in your school.