Global Learn Day X

We are truly proud that the co-founder and chairman of e-Pals, Tim Discipio will provide our Keynote as we open the North American segment of Global Learn Day, Voyage Number Ten. The Keynote Headline speaks perfectly to the splendid results of his company:  Connecting global classrooms for collaborative project sharing and literacy learning.

We asked Tim to write us and let us know about his work. The balance of this text comes from Tim. But first — thank you, Tim!

What is ePALS?:

ePALS Classroom Exchange® is internationally recognized as the leading provider of school-safe email™ and collaborative technology. ePALS also maintains the ePALS Global Network™, the world’s largest community of connected classrooms. Used in schools in 191 countries, the ePALS Global Network has made it possible for more than 6.5 million students and educators to employ the Internet as the ultimate communication and cross-cultural learning tool.

TIME & TEMPERATURE, BOSTON

So, with GLD X’s focus this year, ePALS not only provides the safe technology for classrooms and students to connect with one another, we also provide a large community of classrooms where teachers can find the right partner class to work with using that safe technology. What a voyage it is! Our technology comes with built-in translation capabilities in a number of language pairs, so not only does ePALS help teachers break down the walls of their classrooms to reach out around the world, we also help break down the walls of language, time and distance.

About Tim Discipio GLD Ten KeyNoter, Tim Discipio,
Co-Founder and Chairman of ePALS Classroom Exchange:

Founded in 1996 by John Irving and Tim DiScipio, ePALS began as an online environment where educators and students could safely connect with peers for cross cultural learning. Over time, ePALS achieved global reach by focusing on the international character of its community, making the site available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Arabic and French.

At ePALS, Tim directs business development, marketing and partnerships. Considered by industry peers to be a true pioneer in education technology, he speaks regularly at conferences and is frequently interviewed on trends and the role ePALS plays worldwide in connecting classrooms with safe tools. He was the key force behind a recent global “On-Demand” partnership with IBM and Los Angeles Unified School District selecting the company’s SchoolMail™ product as its district-wide email solution. Recently, Tim opened the Chinese market through a direct relationship with senior directors in the Chinese Ministry of Education. In April 2005, the Chinese Ministry gave Tim the great honor of giving the keynote address in Xi’an China at a major education conference attended by senior central and provincial education officials from China’s 26 provinces.

What is it that ePALS does? A subscriber to e-Pals writes

” I teach English and intercultural communication at a university in Japan. This is my fourth year since I started finding partner classeson this homepage. We had a great cultural exchange with EFL students in New York, college students in Taiwan, and high school students in Italy…I require my students to do email exchanges every year.”
Japanese EFL - ePALS Teacher

How do you put into a few salient words the impact that the use of ePALS has had in classrooms, and individual teachers’ and students’ lives, around the world?

What started as a small grain of sand, connecting a handful of classrooms in a virtual pen pal friendship, has grown to include over 116,000 international classrooms, speaking many languages, working on many web-based projects, practicing and improving reading, writing and second language skills together through email, forum, blog and other technological exchanges.

By having the children and youth of the world work together to get to know one another, under the guiding and watchful hand of their teacher, ePALS hopes to not only make the world a more tolerant place, but also to help teachers and students achieve curriculum goals, improve performance scores, integrate technology into their lives, share information and knowledge, create new ways of teaching and learning, and provide students - no matter where they live - with the opportunity to connect with technology and peers to make their world a bigger, and better place, to enable them to gain the employability skills they need for the 21st Century workplace, to motivate and engage them to become lifelong learners.

Teachers connect their students with a partner class in another part of the world via the ePALS Global Network (www.epals.com) and our school-safe email, forums, blogs, and projects. The partnerships available through ePALS are as varied as the number of teachers and students we have.

Perhaps one ePALS Teacher in Tunisia sums it up best:

“First of all, I’d like to thank all those who are involved with ePALS and mainly those whose main objective is to bring education and technology together in various effective ways. I presented a project…under the title “Pens up to Build/Extend Bridges”. It drew the attention of different teams from different countries: 2 teams from the USA, 2 from Japan, 1 from Canada, 1 from France, 1 from Spain and 1 from Poland. Other teams will join us…Many thanks.”

Or this ePALS teacher in Japan:

“I teach English and intercultural communication at a university in Japan. This is my fourth year since I started finding partner classes on this homepage. We had a great cultural exchange with EFL students in New York, college students in Taiwan, and high school students in Italy…I require my students to do email exchanges every year.”

And finally, an ePALS teacher in Germany:

“ePALS helped me a lot to motivate my students to learn the English language this school year. Thanks to all of the colleagues and students who joined our projects. It was a pleasure for us to work together with you. Hopefully, the next school year will be as interesting as this one. We count on you.”

We are proud to be a part of this tenth edition of Global Learn Day.

We have scoured our global community for some of the brightest ePALS Leaders and Thinkers to be with you today, those ePALS teachers who take to heart what international friendships can mean to a student’s learning life, their own teaching and their curriculum. You will hear some remarkable stories applicable to a variety of age ranges, cultural and geographic locations, and above all, you will hear how these teachers brought their own spark of learning to their students’ lives. With teachers like these, which child cannot help but learn?

Thank you for including us on this voyage!

Tim DiScipio

ePALS Classroom Exchange®
September 26, 2006

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 2:03 pm and is filed under GLD-Voyage Ten. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.