On Wednesday, one of my Spanish 2 students approached me at the start of class and asked, "Ms. Greibus, why can't we have Spanish-speaking pen pals? I think something like that would be really fun." A few days later, I look at the course syllabus to find that this week centers around ePals, a website connecting classrooms and teachers around the world via email exchanges, video chats and/or Skype. What a strange coincidence...
To be completely honest, at first I didn't find much use to the teaching tools portion of the ePals website. I was generally disappointed at the limited amount of resources at the secondary level for Spanish education. I also found the suggested projects and downloadable content over-priced and very similar to teaching ideas advertised on Teacherspayteachers.com. Although I understand needing something in a pinch, most of these resources could easily be recreated, and for free. Furthermore, a majority of the projects consisted of a worksheet or handout on grammar points such as the preterit tense and informal commands; I didn't find much that I hadn't already created myself. However, after further exploration, I encountered the ePals Global Community link. After that, I was totally sold.
I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of use. I simply selected my language (Spanish) and age group (14-16) and immediately a list of potential teachers and classrooms appeared. I even found one teacher, Luis Jiménez from Spain, who matched my exact needs and specifications in terms of creating an email-exchange program with my own classes. I plan on discussing what I found with my Spanish 2 and 3 classes in the near future and to continue working out the details. I am most certainly excited at the thought of my students communicating with their Spanish-speaking peers. What an authentic and teachable moment!
Perfect timing!
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