ePals: global classroom

Generally, ePals is an online community of collaborative classrooms engaged in cross-cultural exchanges, project sharing and language learning. After exploring the website, I was impressed by the project: 2014 junior Folklorist Challenge. It is an activity that participants discover a tradition in their community and share the story with the world. There are four main steps in this project: research, document, interpret, present. Specifically, first of all, participants should identify a tradition, find a tradition bearer and develop your interview questions. Then, participants need interview and observe the tradition bearer and document the experience. Thirdly, they are supposed to review all of their notes, photos, video and audio, decide how to shape their story and share the tradition, and create and polish their presentation, like film a video, create a slideshow or record a podcast. The last step is to share their podcast, slide show or video with the world.

In my opinion, there are three key features of the project: practical ability, technology use, global communication. I think all of them are very important for today's students. What students need is not only book knowledge, but also hand-on skills, in other words, they need to transfer their knowledge to productivity. As a teacher, I should help my students to achieve this transition. Although this project, I can help my students open their minds to discover a tradition and use what they have learned to work on it, like designing their interviews and telling the stories. As for technology use, as far as we are concerned, our world and life are full of science and technology, so mastery of technical skills is critical for students. By joining in the project, they can know about some technical appliances and web tools, such as how to make videos and how to upload their presentation online. Last but not least, I think one of the highlights of the project is that it provides students around the world to communicate with each other. In this era of globalization, it's necessary to know about the world outside. Through sharing their own traditions, students can broaden their horizon.

Above are the features of the project
that I could use in my teaching. And there are many other interesting and meaningful projects on the site. I hope I can explore them with my students in future.