The tool that I found to be most interesting was the choice to "Connect with other classrooms". I have never used ePals or even heard of it before, but looking into it I find it to be an extremely useful tool for education. You are giving your students the option to not only connect with other students within your school, but also within your community, state, country, or worldwide. This is incredible! I remember being in school and asking my peers what they were learning in their classrooms with their teachers, We would bounce ideas off of each other, compare and contrast how our teachers were presenting the information to us, etc. By allowing your class the option to connect with other classrooms you are allowing the learners to share all different kinds of learning experiences, giving them a plethora of choices to decide how they learn best.
Now lets think bigger. Bigger than just class to class, but rather school to school. ePals can be a great tool for pen-palling. You can connect your learners to other learners within the community, or across the country. ePals allows learners to even connect with students on the other side of the world. How cool would it be to have been able to chat with someone your age, learning what you are learning, thousands of miles away? Being able to differentiate how education varies across countries and cultures is an incredible learning experience that can be given to students with ePals. Exploring this Tech Tool has shown me how incredible and connected we can be as learners as well as educators.
I always tell my students that I think they learn more from each other about my lessons more than me sometimes! I like that you focused on ePal and talked about how peers can use it as a tool to work with peers to communicate what they are learning from different teachers.
ReplyDeleteI also remember pen palling when I was in school. I remember how long it took to get letters back and forth from people and we ended up communicated monthly, rather than weekly. ePal would definitely eliminate how slow the process is and increase the frequent communication.
Reading your blog also reminded me of not only with understanding different teaching techniques, but also seeing how what they are learning can be applied in the workforce. Instead of paying a guest speaker to come to the class it would be a lot less money to have them be interviewed from their work.
Just another idea to make more connections outside of the classroom!