ePals: My Favorite Discovery Yet

As a future foreign language teacher, I cannot even begin to contain my excitement about this teaching site my professor told us to check out: ePals. My brain is already running a thousand miles a minute thinking about all the different ways I can incorporate this into my future Spanish classroom.  ONE, it will be excellent Spanish practice for my students to correspond with authentic Spanish speakers-- and not only that, but fellow students they can relate to, and TWO, it'll encourage intercultural connections that are so much more tangible than scenarios simply recreated in the classroom.

After checking out the site, two features which I will definitely be using are:

• Connecting with classrooms: You can search by subject, grade level, and languages so that it is compatible.  I love this. It puts you in touch with teachers who want to connect with you and your students, too!
• Explore Experiences: ePals also sets up its own activities which your classroom can join.  Of course, they aren't all Spanish activities, but I have already found some great ones to participate in such as an intercultural recipe exchange with classrooms from all over the world (it even comes with project ideas for your students to do, too!).

ePals-Mediensis, a blog from a high school in Romania, posted some of the mail they have received from other classes in cooperating projects from around the world.  I mean, check it out, it's incredible! Just seeing the results of two classrooms from opposite ends of the world working together gets me so excited! When thinking about my future classroom, a bilingual exchange could happen between students in a Spanish speaking country studying English and my students learning Spanish. It could be catered to virtually any unit in the Spanish classroom, too, and gets students actively involved in learning a language.  Suddenly Spanish isn't something from a far off land that doesn't exist when you don't think about it: it's real, it's tangible, and the students are making cross-cultural connections (and maybe even friends)!