ePals - Academics for Homeschool Students Gr. 7-12

Over 6 million students and teachers from 191 countries are building skills and enhancing learning with ePals. Over 111,000 classroom profiles link schools together as cross-cultural learning partners and friends. Established in 1996.

WHAT IS EPALS?
ePals, the leading provider of school-safe collaborative learning products for K-12 students, teachers and parents, has been dedicated to helping learners from around the world connect and interact with each other online in a safe, educational environment. ePals connects teachers, students, parents and educators from around the world, enabling them to communicate and collaborate on academic and cultural projects and establish international friendships.
Our global community reaches more than 11 million people and more than 130,000 classrooms in over 200 countries and territories. ePals technology enables these learners, who speak over 136 different languages, to connect, share, collaborate and learn.

IS THERE ANY COST ASSOCIATED WITH EPALS?
All of ePals services and features are free of charge.

WHAT WILL MY STUDENTS GAIN BY USING EPALS?
ePals provides students with opportunities to develop many skills imperative to success in the 21st century. These include computer literacy, critical-thinking abilities, global awareness, collaborative skills and multicultural friendships. ePals email tools are the first student email with built-in instant language translation to help break down language barriers and increase cross-cultural learning. Our email tools have intuitive web-based interfaces which allow children to become familiar with the email system in a short period of time. As an additional bonus, students become eager and improved writers when given an audience, other than their teachers, and something of value about which to write.

WHAT IS YOUR PRIVACY POLICY?
ePals protects the privacy of our users.

WHAT SPECIFIC FEATURES ARE A PART OF EPALS?
ePals has many features that promote global awareness, elevate learning opportunities and foster community cohesiveness. These features include:
• market-leading SchoolMail, a secure email system;
• award-winning SchoolBlog;
• file sharing and storage;
• personalized homepage;
• language translation tools;
• Ask an ePals Teacher;
• forums – for teachers, families, and students;
• lesson plans, instructional guides;
• collaborative projects; and
• In2Books.

WHAT IS IN2BOOKS?
In2Books is ePals' evidenced-based curriculum that fosters reading, writing and critical thinking skills. The curriculum has been shown to significantly improve students' literacy skills and love of learning. In2Books promotes literacy across the curriculum by matching students with adult pen pals who read the same books and correspond online about important issues in the books. The books are carefully selected to align with literacy, social studies and science standards. This learning experience is reinforced in the classroom with the study of the applicable genre, in-depth discussion and carefully designed curricula.