Epals

I was enchanted when I was looking through the epals.com site.

There are so many useful and innovative ideas and projects all available in one place, for free! I love the easy interface, and I found it a breeze to navigate. It is rather difficult for me to pick a favorite feature, as I haven't actually had the opportunity to use any of them yet, but during my exploration, I found a few things I am excited to explore further.

The projects section is great. It gives you great ideas on how to incorporate global collaboration and communication into your lessons. This is especially helpful for teachers who are new to this type of thing! My two special favorite projects are "Habitats" and "The Way We Are."
The "Habitats" project would be an awesome way for a science teacher to incorporate more language , communication and global knowledge into their curriculum. It would also be wonderful for an ESL teacher teaching through content based instruction to incorporate some of the science curricula into her language teaching.
"The Way We Are" is a super way for classes to explore and discover how the global community can be different and similar to the way "we" are. It also encourages students to think about the "we" as a member of the global community. I think t is especially important for students to learn that "their" way is not necessarily the global norm, that there are people in the world who think that they are the different ones!

I am also thrilled that epals is so focused on internet safety. I remember that I and many of my peers expressed concerns with keeping our students safe in the online community. Epals may be a great starting point for introducing your students to the safe use of the internet.

In my own (hypothetical) classroom, I think I would be most likely to use epals for the projects aspect. I need help thinking of ways to use some of these great technological tools for instruction, and the projects are like lesson plans that really help me to visualize 1) how my students could benefit form such global communication and 2) how I could actually implement it in my classroom.
The digital storytelling and the way we are projects would be great additions to my content based ESL instruction in the content area of social studies. In addition to my local curriculum, I could expose my students to a more global point of view.
The habitats, natural disasters, global warming, water, and weather projects would benefit my science content instruction. Again, in addition to a more localized curriculum, my students would be able to listen to the viewpoints of their world-wide peers.
In both cases, the projects inherently combine content development with communication. My students, as English language learners, need English communication skills, and this would be a great motivating tool!