New Site Promotes Global Learning With Intelligent Classroom Matching, Upgraded Collaboration Tools, Project Library and Top-Quality Content From the Smithsonian Institution, National Geographic, Cobblestone & Cricket, Educurious, and ONE DROP
SAN DIEGO, CA--(Marketwire - June 25, 2012) - ePals Corporation (TSX VENTURE: SLN), an education media company and the world's leading safe social learning network, today announced the launch of the all-new ePals, significantly enhancing its online collaborative capabilities. ePals provides a one-stop learning solution, combining access to local, national and international classroom matching, standards-aligned projects, and private customizable group workspaces. ePals connects more than 800,000 classrooms across 200 countries and reaches over 27 million students, teachers and parents for engaging and rigorous authentic learning experiences. Projects feature top-quality content that address 21st century skills, collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking and writing aligned to state, national and international standards, including the Common Core ELA State Standards.
At the core of the all-new ePals is its intelligent matching and project creation capabilities. Built to capture a classroom's profile and learning objectives, contextualize the information, and use it to anticipate compatibility across an international network of project-based learning communities, ePals not only maximizes the likelihood of finding the right classroom partners, it helps teachers drive student engagement and get the most out of each collaborative learning opportunity.
New Additions and Enhancements to ePals include:
A Better Way to Match with Classrooms -- It's easier than ever for ePals educators to find and connect with other classrooms for project-based learning focused on literacy, culture, science and other standards-aligned topics.
· MatchSense™ - automatically recommends classroom partners and projects based on member profiles, goals and interests, and displays a dynamic list of recommended partners on the member's homepage
· Dynamic Search - allows educators to find classrooms based on their choice of specific interests (e.g. poetry, water conservation), language, geographic location, age/skill levels, and number of students, collaboration goals and project duration
· Collaboration Tables - ePals members can find or create a project for teaching a subject of their choosing, and invite others to join, within their own classroom, with parents, across a grade, with a partner classroom or including whole groups of classrooms
Upgraded Suite of Collaborative Tools -- provide educators with safe, private, customizable Web 2.0 workspaces for each of their projects.
Each workspace includes a blog, media gallery and discussion forum -- accessible only to the educators and students invited to be part of that group. As a complement to ePals' policy managed email service, SchoolMail®, the collaboration tables provide a safe way for students in different classrooms, locally or across the world, to share their experiences, ideas, and resources.
Expanded, Easy-To-Browse Project Library -- where ePals members can search, discover and create new projects.
· The Project Library, continually enhanced by teacher-contributed projects, showcases outstanding projects from leading content partners and members
· Projects are classroom-ready, and uniquely designed for online collaboration including instructional plans, culminating activities, and related resources
· A unique template-driven structure lets teachers easily adopt projects and customize them for their own uses, or create their own from scratch
· Featured projects include National Geographic's "The Way We Are," "Poetic Social Mission," presented by ONE DROP and "Avoiding the Path to Panem," ePals' newest featured project presented by Educurious, and based on the popular Hunger Games trilogy
Rich, Multi-Disciplinary Student-Centric Learning Centers -- ePals' new Learning Centers are designed to encourage independent student learning and feature standards-aligned content, activities, multimedia, and teacher resources.
Featured Learning Centers currently include:
· Smithsonian on ePals - Featured exhibits and learning activities from one of the world's most respected museum and research complexes
· The Creative Writing Center - Tips, galleries and prompts to inspire creative writing
· We Are ePals Center - Where members share and celebrate their unique cultures
· Global Citizens - Member stories about how kids helps others in their communities and across the world
· The Science Center - Where students and teachers can find experiments, articles and activities
· In2Books ® Book Club - A place for students to chat about books, publish book reviews and explore genres
Learning Centers include interdisciplinary explorations of a shared topic or theme. The first featured exploration is "The Perfect Storm: An Adventure Through the World of Wild Weather" showcasing a variety of weather-related projects, articles, and activities from National Geographic, the Smithsonian, and Cobblestone & Cricket, two of ePals' award winning children's magazines. For a limited time, ePals members can download "The Perfect Storm," a free digital compilation of six award-winning Cobblestone & Cricket magazines, to explore weather, natural hazards and more.
Game Center -- ePals' Game Room provides a safe place for students around the world to match and learn together through, multi-player games that build strategy and logic skills, with an initial offering that includes games such as Cobblestone & Cricket's Build a Machine and Spider Match, Scientists at Work, Chess, and Sudoku.
"Despite the advance of new media technologies, teachers everywhere remain limited in their ability to access the tools that most effectively foster 21st-century learning skills. ePals offers a new kind of social discovery network where teachers, students and mentors connect and collaborate in a safe and secure environment that motivates students and engages them in the world beyond traditional classroom boundaries. This newest version of our service reflects deep support for teachers and students as they explore how to make social media an integral part of their day-to-day learning, while promoting cross-cultural exchange, language learning and global awareness," says ePals Chairman and CEO Miles Gilburne. "We know that collaborative learning motivates students and develops many of the critical thinking, writing and problem solving skills demanded by the 21st century workplace. At a time when innovation in education is more important than ever, our new offering sets a new standard for safe meaningful collaborative learning both during and after school hours."
For more information about the ePals Global Learning Network, visit www.epals.com.
About ePals Corporation
ePals Corporation (TSX VENTURE: SLN) is an education media company and the leading provider of safe social learning networks (SLN). Focused on the K-12 market, ePals offers elementary and secondary school administrators, teachers, students and parents worldwide a safe and secure platform for building educational communities, providing quality digital content and facilitating collaboration for effective 21st century learning. ePals' award-winning products include: the ePals Global Learning Network; SchoolMail®365; LearningSpace®; In2Books®, a common core eMentoring program that builds reading, writing and critical thinking skills; and popular children's educational publishing brands including Cricket® and Cobblestone®. ePals customers and partners include the International Baccalaureate, Microsoft Corporation, Dell Inc., IBM Corp., National Geographic and leading school districts across the United States and globally. ePals serves approximately 800,000 classrooms and reaches millions of teachers, students and parents in approximately 200 countries and territories. Visit www.epals.com. For In2Books, visit www.In2Books.com.
Contact Information
· FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Sue Hanson
Media Relations
ePals PR
Phone: (763) 657-0987
sue@susanhanson.com
Will Jarred
SVP, Marketing & Corporate Communications
ePals Corporation
Phone: (703) 885-3400
wjarred@corp.epals.com
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