ePals Online Community Builds Cross-Cultural Collaborations
and Language Learning Exchanges Between Chinese
Students and Their Peers Around the World
ePals Executives To Demonstrate How Chinese Students are Collaborating Through
ePals Learning Community At Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, April 2-3
Herndon, Va. (Apr. 2, 2008) – With hundreds of classrooms in China now using the education applications of ePals, Inc., teachers and parents worldwide are accelerating the frequency of online collaborations with Chinese students for their K-12 students in regular course work and various independent learning activities. Active in China since 2000, ePals is the largest network of interconnected classrooms in the world, reaching more than 13 million educators and students in 200 countries and territories.
Ed Fish, President and CEO of ePals, said, “China’s importance in 21st century world trade and the global economy, the approaching 2008 Olympic Summer Games in Beijing, and rising demand for literacy in Mandarin are key reasons why educators and parents in western industrialized economies in particular are voicing great interest in connecting with Chinese classrooms through ePals. We’re hearing from parents, teachers and students around the world that they have a very strong desire to meet and learn from Chinese peers online.”
Fish and Tim DiScipio, ePals’ Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer, are attending the Intel Developer Forum this week in Shanghai. ePals, based in Herndon, Va., announced in February that it is one of several companies partnering with Intel on the Intel-powered classmate PC. The classmate PC is an affordable fully functional laptop designed to support collaborative learning environments for students in emerging markets.
“We are working with Intel and its partners to incorporate the global community and learning resources of ePals with Intel’s classmate PC,” DiScipio said. “We also are working with other companies that are supporting education on Intel-based machines, and look forward to collaborating with Intel-based OEMs to target the K-12 education market.” ePals was the first company to introduce education applications on the classmate PC that are dedicated to creating a safe online environment. Among these applications are ePals’ global community for learning, SchoolMail™ and SchoolBlog™.
Demonstrations for Conference Participants, News Media
At the Intel conference in the Shanghai International Convention Center, Fish and DiScipio will be demonstrating how elementary, high school and even college students in China use ePals to connect with and learn from students in other countries. Students’ communication skills can be greatly enhanced through ePals’ SchoolMail™, which uniquely provides an embedded, instant translation capability for email texts and now accommodates nine widely used languages. This high-quality translation feature encompasses a total of 72 different language pairs. Mandarin to English and English to Mandarin, and Spanish to Mandarin and Mandarin to Spanish are among these pairs.
As of March 28, ePals had catalogued and posted more than 2500 requests from teachers, parents and students for collaborations with schools or students in China. Here is one example from a mother in San Jose, California:
“I am looking for an ePal for my daughter. Anywhere in the world is fine as long as the ages are between 11-13. I am especially interested in ePals from China (my daughter is learning Chinese), the UK (she loves Harry Potter) and in Asia. Thank you!”
Also as of March 28, ePals had posted more than 550 requests from within China for collaborations with students in other countries. Here is one from a high school teacher in Qinhuangdao, a popular Yellow Sea resort city located 270 kilometers (167 miles) east of Beijing:
“My students are sophomores majoring in English. Their first language is Chinese. They have studied English for 8 years, but have no chance to communicate with others. They are interested in exchanging culture with others. We are looking for any classes at the same English level around the world. We prefer to correspond by email and to write twice a month or once a week. We look forward to hearing from you!”
Leading Online Community for Connecting Chinese Classrooms Around the World
ePals quickly became the leading online community for connecting China’s classrooms with other classrooms around the world after it was first introduced in China in 2000.
Yaodong Chen, an English teacher at Guangxi Polytechnic College in Liuzhou, a city in central-southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, first began using ePals for web-based language learning in 2002 and since then has worked with more than 700 students.
“ePals is introducing Chinese students to authentic English,” Chen said. “It will revolutionize the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language in the Chinese context.” Chen’s students exchange emails with students in the U.S., U.K., New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Japan, Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, Italy, Iceland, Ireland, The Netherlands, and many other countries in Asia, Africa and Europe.
In addition to multilingual activities and matching classrooms locally and internationally for collaborative learning, ePals fosters critical thinking, reading comprehension, writing skills as well as 21st century skills, such as digital literacy and cultural understanding. It includes a wide range of curricula, ranging from self-organizing to highly structured.
The collaboration with Intel is part of ePals’ ongoing initiative to accelerate the growth of its global community for learning. Last September, ePals made its award-winning connectivity tools and curricula available at no cost to educators and school systems. This shift from subscription to free access has rapidly accelerated the growth of the ePals community. ePals safely connects more than 350,000 teachers and their classrooms from 200 countries and territories around the world, and is adding more than 2,000 new classrooms each month.
High-quality digital content from National Geographic was threaded throughout ePals.com earlier this year. Initial topics in the National Geographic content include maps and geography, habits, global warming, natural disasters, people and culture, great leaders, water and weather. ePals also has been embraced by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development Council to provide African students and educators with the opportunity to connect with classrooms worldwide through the ePals’ Global Community.
The ePals demonstrations will be ongoing during the conference. They can be viewed at the ePals exhibit booth from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on April 2-3 in the Shanghai International Convention Center. The booth is located at Booth BU30 in the IT/CPG area of Level 1 in the Mandarin Hall. Members of the news media are invited to view the demonstrations to see how real Chinese students are learning with students from other countries through the ePals education applications. Fish and DiScipio also are available for interviews during the conference. (To arrange an interview, please call (+86) 13917140427 and ask to speak with Ed Fish. For a back-up contact, please call Amy Gross at (011) 718-813- 8053.)
More Information
For more information about ePals and its products, please visit www.epals.com or the corporate site www.epalscorp.com. Details of the Intel classmate PC initiative can be found at www.classmatepc.com.
About ePals
Founded in 1996 and merged with In2Books in 2006, ePals offers K-12 students and teachers around the world a safe environment for building and exchanging knowledge based on protected connectivity tools, evidence-based curricula and authentic, collaborative learning experiences. The ePals Global Learning Community™ (www.ePals.com) is the largest online community of K-12 learners, enabling more than 325,000 educators and 129,000 classrooms across 200 countries and territories to safely connect, exchange ideas, and work together. The company’s mission is to support lifelong learning through collaborative experiences that empower and inspire.
Contacts
Primary contact in Shanghai
April 1-3
Ed Fish
(+86) 13917140427
Exhibitor Booth BU30,
IT/CPG Area, Level 1,
Mandarin Hall
Shanghai International
Convention Center
Alternate contact for China-based and international media
Amy Gross
718-813-8053
Agross at rlmnet dot com
ePals, Inc.
Rebecca Kilduff
703-885-3400
rkilduff at corp.epals dot com
www.epalscorp.com
C. Blohm & Associates, Inc.
Sandy Fash
608-839-9800
sandy at cblohm dot com
www.cblohm.com
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