ePals： A Global Window

Nowadays, the internet has become the biggest net in the world, people could get news, share moments and buy anything on this net. There is also a raising trend of taking an online course in many countries. Students from different countries desire to learn from whole world and the ePals just feed this need perfectly.

Just ePals introduced itself, it 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. On this website, both teachers and students could join in a class or a project. For example, for the students they could join a project started by a teacher who is from Texas State in the U.S., the teacher hold this project for providing his students chances of communicating with  people from different countries. The students in his class could get close to the culture of his/her assigned country. They will present what they learnt at the end of the project. The students or teachers who join in this project from the other place could also get a chance to talk with a native English speaker. With this example, it is not hard to find that all the participants in this project got what they want to learn in this interactive, opening teaching environment.

I had learned in a university which locates in an undeveloped province in China. In my spare time, I had tutored the pupils for a long time. The biggest problem I found for the students is not the lacking of knowledge but their limited horizons. They didn’t know how big the world is and sometimes they even showed the emotion of resistance to discover the world. I believed that the world will be connected by the internet and one day the on-line class will also become the window for these students. Through the internet, they may know the world beyond the hills which are around them. And their teachers could also get the newest teaching materials for their students with visiting the online classes.