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.
- 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. Yes, there is a website called www.keypals.com that you could have guessed and found. [But there are many more.]
- 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 65,000 classrooms from 191 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.
If you want your students to have a better understanding of the location of their ePALS they can go to the ePAL world map and click on a region of the world. Great for Social Studies integration!
- Places to Locate Partners - Québec English Schools Network (QESN). The webpage includes a collection of mailing lists and project registries that are useful when finding partners for projects.
- 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.
- Web 66 -
The Web66 International School Web Site Registry opens with a map of the USA and a listing of countries around the world. Teachers and students can click on a state in the USA or a country name to find a listing of schools according to level - elementary, secondary, school districts and educational organizations. You can chose a school by special categories such as Arts, Charter, Gifted & Talented, Handicap, International, Math, Montessori, On-Line, Parochial, Private, Science,
Historical and Statistical Information.
The school links go to the webpage for the school where you can locate contact information. Teachers can also register their school in the Web66 database of schools. There is no search for grade level or content area because this is a registry of school websites. Once inside the school webpage you will need to look around for classrooms and teachers to contact.
- Rigby Heinemann Keypal lists - You can connect with teachers and classes around the world by sending or responding to e-mail on these webpages. Students are grouped in ages 5-10, 11-13 and 14-20.
- 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 7650 subscribers from 82 countries in IECC mailing lists combined.
- Pen Pal Corner - European Schoolnet - The Penpal corner is a bulletin board system dedicated to pupils and kids who wish to find a friend online.
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