San Antonio, Texas (June 30, 2008) – Concurrent with the release of the National Education Technology Standards for teachers (NETS-T), ePals, Inc., challenges educators and thought leaders to move beyond solely a discussion of 21st century skills or technology integration, and toward constructing a framework for evaluating solutions that build 21st century skills.

ePals has developed a set of six essential questions to encourage conversation and invites members of the education industry to help complete the framework through which to assess transformative solutions. Visit ePals’ NECC blog (sites.epals.com/NECC2008) to join the discussion.

As a catalyst to conversation, ePals proposes educators to ask the following questions of educational service providers when assessing how can teachers move beyond technology integration and authentically embed NETS into curricula across the content areas to transform learning:

• How do you help students become global citizens in the global marketplace (e.g., in building innovation, literacy, critical thinking, creativity, and responsibility)?

• How do you enable collaboration, teamwork and problem solving in the classroom?

• How do you address the needs of all students?

• How do you foster real-life learning experiences and independent exploration across the curricula?

• How do you create a safe and secure environment for teaching and learning?

• How do you provide professional development that encourages teachers to collaborate, share expertise and maximize student achievement?

“In order to make a real difference, as an industry we need to move collectively toward implementing solutions grounded in innovative pedagogy using the Internet, social networks and collaborative tools,” said Ed Fish, President and CEO of ePals, Inc. “We are proposing these questions and initial framework for evaluating solutions with full understanding that this requires the input of educators and industry leaders alike. The point however is to move from an amorphous debate to a concrete framework for evaluating educational solutions that can make a difference. This is not about a collection of siloed tools; rather it must be about global, community-centered learning approaches that scaffold the essential skills of 21st century citizens.”

Demonstrating this commitment to transformational learning, ePals provides a safe and protected global community, evidence-based curricula, and authentic, collaborative learning experiences, empowering educators to help their students thrive in a global marketplace. Placing an emphasis on making sure that under-resourced schools and students are given the same opportunities to access and use technology while learning, in September 2007, ePals announced that its suite of tools, SchoolM@il and SchoolBlog, in addition to its Global Learning Community, would be available at no cost to educators and students. And in May 2008, the company announced its flagship curricula-based e-mentoring program, In2Books, would be available at no cost to participating Title I schools.

The ePals Global Learning Community (www.ePals.com) is a free service, available for any educator to use to enhance their classroom instruction. The community supports open Web standards for data and system interoperability, including incorporating Open ID (i.e., single username and password) and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) as a standard for exchanging authentication and authorization between security domains.

In order to support teachers in this transformation, ePals is providing professional development opportunities to educators interested in incorporating social networking tools in the classroom is a priority for ePals. This summer, ePals is hosting a special pre-conference event during Alan November’s Building Learning Communities 2008 Conference. The one-day event, held on July 15th in Boston, Mass., will feature ePals executives, educators and instructional technology directors. Speakers will address language learning, cross-cultural pen pal projects, district-wide implementation, how to post podcasts on blogs, and how to connect families with teachers through blogs to help support learning outside of the classroom.

More Information

Drop by the ePals Globally-Connected Classroom Conference, at www.epals.com/conference.

To learn about ePals and activities within the global community, please visit www.epalscorp.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 half a million educators and millions of students 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. ePals is especially committed to enabling academically rigorous educational opportunities in economically disadvantaged environments worldwide through the ePals Foundation – provider of In2Books, the company’s flagship literacy e-mentoring program.

Contacts

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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