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Finding Keypals For Your Class
| Three Types of Keypal Exchanges |
If you and your students have access to the Internet and you would like to begin using this resource, you might want to take some easy onramps onto the Information Superhighway. Keypal experiences are generally the easiest and most appealing route for students. These exchanges of e-mail can have several dimensions and require varying degrees of coordination and management by the classroom teacher:
- friendly, free-form messages from one student to another
- friendly messages that include some purpose, direction and curriculum content
- friendly messages that evolve into a desire to work together on some small activity or project
You'll probably want to go beyond the first type of exchange and involve your students in more meaningful and rewarding keypal experiences that last beyond the sometimes short-lived and disappointing keypal exchanges that many students experience.
There are many places on the WWW where teachers can make contacts with other teachers and students on the same grade level and in the same content area if this is what you seek.
- The easiest way is to visit a keypal website that is designed to help teachers find keypals for their classes. A simple search using a web search engine will produce many sites.
- While browsing school websites you might also find an e-mail address where you can contact the school webmaster or individual teachers.
- Subscribing to a mailing list of educators will also open doors for keypal exchanges when you make a request on the list.
Searching will result in website listings such as these:
- ePALS Classroom Exchange -
This website, which is available in English, French and Spanish, is great for connecting classrooms around the world. You will find classrooms of students who are eager to participate in e-mail exchanges with your class. You can register your own classroom in their database of 19,942 classrooms from 108 countries. ePALS Classroom Exchange also provides e-mail and a chat area for students. Teachers can search for classrooms using these criteria: age, grade, geography, curriculum and language.
A search for "grade 6" on December 31, 1999 resulted in 125 matches.
In the search results you will see information about location, ages and grade level of the students as well as the number of students in the class. Teachers also provide a short description of their class or school to help you decide if their class is a good match for yours.
- Kidlink's KIDCAFE-INDIVIDUAL where students can find keypals for free-form discussions on the KIDCAFE-INDIVIDUAL mailing list. Students who use this opportunity must be Kidlink kids (students through secondary school) who have answered the 4 Kidlink questions. Kidlink also offers an IRC area for registered students.
- Kidlink's KIDCAFE-SCHOOL - an area where classes of students can arrange to meet and discuss topics or themes class to class. Students who use this opportunity must be Kidlink kids (students through secondary school) who have answered the 4 Kidlink questions. Kidlink also offers an IRC area for registered students.
- Intercultural E-Mail Classroom Connections - IECC is a collection of 6 electronic mailing lists for teachers who are seeking online classrooms for keypal exchanges. On this web page you will see directions for subscribing to each of the IECC mailing lists. There are 7890 subscribers from 80 countries in IECC mailing lists combined.
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