Public

Kevin Honeycutt created interview podcasts of the ePALS executive staff and teachers during the Building Learning Communities ePALS conference on July 15, 2008. To view these interviews open his website: http://kevinhoneycutt.org then click on "Driving Questions in Education". Kevin is an extremely talented educator and he has fascinating lessons and resources on his website. You will definately benefit from seeing what he does. Do yourself a favor and save his site as a favorite! - Candace Pauchnick

First ePals Conference in Boston on July 15: global, project-based learning through free communication tools

ePals held its first conference for tech directors and teachers on Tuesday, July 15, in Boston. Our one-day event is a preconference day to Alan November’s Building Learning Communities 2008 Conference.

Speakers
Carol Bar French Instructor/College Now Instructor, Blue Valley, KS High School
Michael Casey Principal/Teacher, Gallon Jug Community School, Belize
Professor Jack Crowell Professor of Mathematics,Delta College, Michigan
Dr. Howie DiBlasi, Digital Journey
Dr. Sheila Gersh Director, Technology & International Projects, Center for School Development City College of New York

It is with deep appreciation to Professor Chen Yaodong and his dedicated students, along with my faithful students, that we were able to have this educational and meaningful opportunity for this web conference between our two schools, Guangxi Polytechnic University in Liuzhou, China, connecting to students from Patrick Henry High School in San Diego, California, U.S.A. To view the PowerPoint presentation that shows photos of all the participants in the conference please click on this link: http://henry.sandi.net/staff/cpauchni/ChinaConf08.ppt Thank you, everyone, for participating.

This was an exciting day. Please read everyone's comments on our web conference. Since that day Yaodong and I have created a PowerPoint presentation that is posted on this blog page. Please view this to see what we did.
Candace Pauchnick

I hope more and more students will log on to our blog and post more questions or answer more questions from either side.I do hope students can visit our blog at their own time.Thanks.

You do not need to login or have a password to look around and leave messages on this blog. The login and password are only for the administrators who created this blog. This blog is open to the public and we encourage all people to please leave us comments.
Sincerely,
The administrators: Candace Pauchnick & Yaodong Chen

Online discussion: What are you talking about ,buddies?What do you think is good for students to talk about online?
Feel free to leave a topic below.Thanks.

Below are quotes from my former students who were involved in e-learning.The best evaluation on education sometimes is from students themselves rather from educators.They know themselves better.
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Wu Yuyin: This course gives me a bridge which leads me to the real English kingdom, and becomes my important enlightenment……Once I receive a letter (she meant an email.---yaodong), I will think about it before I embark on writing. I feel my mind has a lot of sentences dancing and shining. My epals are to be appreciated…….E-learning
teaches me how to communicate. When I communicate with a foreigner,

Frequently Asked Questions(Q&A)

Q. What is the Language Exchange Program?
A. Participants in the Language Exchange Program are matched with a student who speaks the language you are learning for one hour of language exchange per week.This year 32 students from Guangxi Uni of Technology (GXUT) in China and XX students from Patrict Henry High School (PHHS) in San Diego participate in the exchange program.

Q. What are the benefits of language exchange?
A. There are many benefits to participating in the language exchange program including, improving language skills, making new friends, learning slang/informal language, helping people, making contacts for possible future visits overseas and increasing your cultural knowledge and confidence.

The walls came down in my classroom, symbolically, in 2002, as I joined my high school sociology students to other students in the Czech Republic through the exchanging of e-mail letters. Since then, through the use of ePALS.com, I have had my students connected to Ukraine, Italy, France, Austria, Colombia, Romania, Uzbekistan, Germany, Philippines, Taiwan, Belgium, and China.  I’ve had my students involved in live-video conferences with Ukraine, Italy then climaxed with China last spring.  This blog gives us the opportunity to share summaries, examples of our work, our learning and our inspiration with the world.