ePals

Aimed at giving students the opportunity to cooperate on projects with students from different cultures, ePals allows teachers to connect their classes online. This seems like a great way to get your students to interact with and become more aware or even interested in people from other cultures. The students aren’t the only ones who benefit. This looks like a fun way to expand our network of education professionals and perhaps experience some different perspectives from educators around the world.

I like the experiences they have listed, which are basically activity ideas that students can complete with their ePals from classes in other countries. One I liked in particular was the cultural exchange Taste of Culture experience, which asks students to share recipes from their culture with their ePal partners, and then go home and try to cook one of the recipes they learned about.

I would definitely consider using this kind of tool in my classroom. Especially in foreign language classes, students get really excited about foreign cultures and even more so when they can apply what they're learning to something productive and real. This kind of cultural exchange and cooperation gives students the opportunity to put their language skills and culture knowledge to use, and to learn more from natives of that culture. Even something as simple as a recipe exchange would be great for fostering positive experiences and a feeling of fellowship between students from distant cultures.