ePals? Definitely.

At first glance, ePals Global Community looks like any other global collaboration portal, where teachers and students can post and comment and share information for educational purposes. But this site warrants more than just a first glance...

ePals offers more connectivity and collaboration than many physical school buildings do. There are features that allow you to connect with teachers, classes, students, and families all over the world seeking the same global education you are. Not only can you search for collaborators by these categories, but you can also comment and rate user submissions. Labels/tags are used throughout the site for easy navigation, and much of the uploaded documents are multimedia--appropriately progressive for this type of medium. But the collaboration offered on this site isn't limited to Microsoft Office documents.

For example, if you go to the Student tab and click on Team Earth, you're brought to a collaborative portal in which schools from across the world are engaged in eco-friendly learning and teaching activities, including a pledge contest that will be shared with governmental agencies in Copenhagen. Of course, there are also activities geared towards increasing climate change awareness and discussion boards focused on specific eco-issues.

Or, take the featured project that was displayed when I first logged on to the home page, titled "Compartiendo y Comunicandonos Aprenderemos Nuestras Culturas y Lenguaje (We Can Learn About Our Language and Culture through Sharing and Communicating)," which is a project partnership between a school in Land O'Lakes, Florida and Bucaramanga, Columbia. This language/culture-based project offers students and families from both school communities the opportunity to learn as they share with others through virtual presentations, written work, a web page, and other evaluations. For language teachers, this is a truly amazing feature that brings not only the language, but the culture and indeed real native speakers into the classroom.

Really, this post just describes the tip of the iceberg. I will certainly be using this site in the future, and I encourage you to as well!