ePals for Teachers and Families

"Globe post card sample 1" by Mishel Churkin found on Flickr

I've been checking out ePals as a web resource for teachers. ePals is an online site where teachers can post collaborative assignment ideas and search for other classrooms in the States and around the World to learn with.

"ePals is the leading provider of safe collaborative technology for schools to connect and learn in a protected, project-based learning network. With classrooms in 200 countries and territories, ePals makes it easy to connect learners locally, nationally or internationally. "

Immediately I felt excited at the prospect that foreign language teachers can advertise and search for opportunities for their learners to converse with persons in the target language being taught. The search for collaborators is easy: you can specify age range, target language, subject area, and even a specific country. Right now a Chilean class that is looking for an English speaking partner class. This idea would be especially cool for example if an American high school class learning Spanish partnered with a Spanish speaking class learning English.To learn more about products and services offered by ePals go to their products page.

One other super cool feature: In today's digital age I've started to become acculturated to the idea of having a global classroom, but really fascinated me about ePals is that families looking to provide specific educational experiences for their children can also utilize ePals. There is an entire family section. One family is looking to partner with a Norwegian family for an online intercultural exchange, including potential language learning opportunities.  There's even a forum for homeschooling families around the world!

Whether you are a teacher looking to create more collaborative experiences for your students outside of the classroom, or a parent looking to create enriching experiences for your child, I would recommend checking out ePals. 

Using creative internet tools to enhance writing education

Book swapping, a photo by nSeika on Flickr.

I have to admit that I feel I am at a distinct disadvantage taking this internet tools course during my first semester of my TESOL Ed.M studies. It's hard for me to imagine how to use the tools we are learning about in an L2 classroom. This semester I couldn't get into any core classes (just gen. eds.) so I haven't yet learned about L2 pedagogy and have no educational background otherwise!

However, I am familiar with creative and expository writing, since that was my undergrad studies. My discussion of creative internet tools, therefore, are going to be regulated to what I do know. Two tools I want to discuss are from Pim Pam Pum. They are Bookr and Bubblr...both are so cool.

Bookr allows a person to create small text and image based books. One can use their own or another person's allowed copyrighted images, and then add text to each page. The standard size only has several pages; however, you can add more. Many times a student might be asked to create some sort of creative representation as a final draft of work done. In a poetry class a student might make a visual art book of a poem or collection of poems. Having an online medium to design creative projects is amazing resource for students, particularly since the online work is already formatted. Of course one can always do it the old school way: painstakingly printing and collating written works followed by professional or hand-binding. However, if a student simply wants to present written work in a dynamic format, using Bookr online can fit that bill.

Bubblr, is similar to Bookr in that on can upload photographs off internet sites like Flickr, but one can create comic books with the text. When checking out Pim Pam Pum's online tool Bubblr, I couldn't help but be reminded of a job skill program I used to be involved in. All trainees were expected to keep journals of their work experiences, etc. Well, one participant in one of the crew was functionally illiterate and the crew leaders of that crew asked that the participant take pictures and create titles for each picture. I think it was a great idea, but the camera the organization provided the individual was a regular, disposable camera. At the time, I thought a Polaroid would have been easier. Well, if only that member had been able to use the crew's digital camera...Bubblr would have been a perfect, and would have also taught computer and internet literacy, as well!

Using Flickr and other pics in your blog

Ready to Entertain, a photo by Peter G Trimming on Flickr.


One problem with the internet is that it is easy to copy and paste and not think about who might own what is being taken. This class module number 9 is about using Flickr  and other image sharing sites in a responsible manner that protects an author's copyrights. 


I took the above cute picture off of Flickr. How did I know this image was okay to copy? This picture is registered with creative commons licensing with a simple attribution license. 
"Attribution means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give you credit."

To learn about creative commons licensing I would recommend going to their website. Not only can you learn about the types of licensing that allow different permissions, but you can use creative commons to put permissions on your own work.  


One type of creative commons licensing that most all of us could recognize is Wikipedia's use of the technology. Wikipedia uses:
Attribution-ShareAlike 

CC BY-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

So you can see that there is a large variety of copyright permissions available for people to take advantage of legally; therefore, no one has any excuse for using a photo without permission.

Back to how we can use this licensing technology to improve our blogs!
Once you are on a website like Flickr, go to their creative commons section to find the a picture within the aproppriate permissions for your blog, artistic, or commercial purposes. Flickr has an upload to Blogger option. Then the image will be posted on your blog as a stand alone with the title of the picture being the title of your blog, and will be posted with proper credit to the licenser of the picture. If you want more to the blog entry, then edit the blog, add text, and change the title if you want, etc. There are many, many, many other ways to add licensed images to a blog, and there are specialized websites for this purpose. But many seemed too convoluted to me! So, if you are not that technically savy, I found that connecting my blog with Flickr and then editing the created blog post to be the easiest way.  I found if I just pasted in the HTML code directly into the blog, then the credit isn't there, and I'd have to reference and credit the image manually...no need to worry about typos in the citation or overlooked details if you post the image to the blog right through Flickr. 


If you have any reservations about how to use licensed images, the best thing to do is to use your own images, because there is more to image taking than copyright infringement (which is bad enough). Blogger warns against image taking can create an issue with stealing bandwidth from a website due to their server being opened (at server's expense) each time someone views the blog. It's just easier to give credit where credit is due!