Map Based Pen Pals!

[Addict]

This forum is for questions pertaining directly to our penpals service.

Please feel free to post any comments, questions, or suggestions.

We hope you like this new service!

Go here to sign up: http://www.theteacherscorner.net/penpals/index.php

[Addict]

You can now enter your class:

http://www.theteacherscorner.net/penpals/index.php

[dfsteacher]

I am a little apprehensive about the pen pal thing. I love the idea, however with all of the safety concerns of today I am still unsure.

[kjem]

Can someone tell me what a Key Pal is?

[Addict]

Hey kjem!

Penpals are traditional - letters back and forth.

Keypals are more modern - email back and forth :)

[Boxcar]

Cool! I'd never heard them called that. Guess I learned something new too!

[kjem]

Thanks, Addict! That would make international pals much easier.

[silvana]

I love the idea of my children receiving mail from across the Atlantic , they are very excited too. As far as safety is concerned I will be checking every letter received and sent out, to ensure all parties concerned are protected. No home addresses will be given just school .

[hweber]

did you have to get parent permission first? I would love to do this next year. Any thing I can do to get them writing is a GOOD thing! Has anyone done this before?

[Boxcar]

I got a great idea about parental consent from a member on this forum: I was told that including the form in an enrollment packet or asking for a signiture at the first conference is an effective way to secure as signed slip.

[silvana]

I have permission from parents and can I say we have already sent out our first pen pal letters and my children are so excited and can't wait for the responses....I am now seriously thinking of setting up the pen pal club in my school for ages 7 to 11 ...what do people think?

[Boxcar]

It sounds good.

I wish I knew where I'd be in the fall. It'd be neat to do something like this, but it'll just depend...

[Ice one Baby]

I have been trying for a few days to view the available fifth grade pen pals. I got other grade levels to work, but not the fifth.

Any help?

[Addict]

Ice One Baby - I just tried 5th grade here: http://www.theteacherscorner.net/penpals/index.php and it works for me...

It is odd that it doesn't work for you, but other grades work for you. Can you try a different browser (maybe IE, Firefox or Safari - whichever you are not using when it doesn't work)?

Let me know.

[hweber]

I too wish I knew what I was teaching in the fall, but I think you could work this into any curriculum so yes, I am interested in a pen pal program for fourth grade. I will go to the page and submit my class. I also like the idea of the permission form in the first day packet.

[Addict]

I have been trying for a few days to view the available fifth grade pen pals. I got other grade levels to work, but not the fifth.

Any help?

Fixed! It should now work. It was a problem with IE users (we got an email about it). I found it and it is now fixed.

Sorry for the problems!

[Boxcar]

You're forgiven! :)

[hweber]

I am impressed Addict. You are awesome

[teach4560]

I teach 1st and 2nd grade. I would like to have my class have pen pals from other students around the US. I think this would be a great social studies and writing activity. Would anybody teaching 1st and 2nd grade be intrested?

[fluffycrane]

I think the idea of consent forms is very smart. I would like to do postcards only because I can read over them quickly before passing them on to my students. This is all new to me. I just hope that it is successful!

[Diane Lammle]

I tried to add my class to the pen pals list pior to my regestration for the forum, do I have to try again? Or will I still be ok? How long does it take to see your post on the pen pal site?

[Addict]

Registration to the mapped pen pals is independent of the message boards. So it doesn't matter which one you signed up for first.

The mapped pen pals typically take a day to get posted.

[Diane Lammle]

Thank You.

[sariahjoy]

I'd love to arrange to have key pals for our students at Korean International School in Qingdao China. I tried to respond to Pilot Elementary but to respond to the contacts, I must have outlook express set up on my computer.

Would someone be willing to contact me through this forum?

Looking forward to key pals!

We have two first grade classes - 18 and 19 students. They all speak English and most fluently. They are also fluent in Korean and most are fluent in Chinese.

I'm from the states and would prefer key pals from anywhere in America.
Julie, the other first grade teacher, is from Australia, and wouldn't mind Aussie pals.

Joy
Grades 1-1 and 1-2 at KISQ in Qingdao, China

[silvana]

Hi there,
I am a year 2 teacher in England and I run a pen pals and key pals club which includes children ages 6 to 11. I would be very interested in becoming key pals with your students. We have a whole school blog where you can find comments from children in pen pal club,at
http://pirates5.edublogs.org/
If you would like to do this please pm me Thanks Silvana

[Lildeer]

How do I get in contact with a contact person to become pen pals? I have attempted to email two different contacts to see if they would be interested in becoming pen pals with my class. The email continues to come back to me as undeliverable. I was interested in either Sweden or an Australian class. They are both still listed as available.

[Rina]

Hi
We've got soo many new impressions from our pen pal classes. It's great Thank you to all!
:)

[Addict]

Lildeer -
If they come back as undeliverable, try a different class. We just post what people enter, and sometimes they may put a bad email address, or they may find a pen pal but do not remove their email with us - and they ignore others who email them.

If you have problems with any of the pen pal contacts - please try a different one.

[honeybee89]

I would love to have my freshman class get involved with the key-pals. I would like to go outside of the United States, so my students can learn about other cultres. Has anyone else done this yet? How was your experience with it? Any advice?

[Chazova]

Hello everybody,
I teach English at a college in Izhevsk, Russia. I have about 25 students (17-20 years old) and I'd like to find penpals for them maybe starting next school year. They are really excited about the idea to write to students from other countries to learn about their culture.
My students don't have Internet access, so we need only snail mail friends. I've been trying to find penpals for some time now, but had no success so far. Could anybody help me with this?
Thanks a lot.

[Addict]

Chazova-

Go here: http://www.theteacherscorner.net/penpals/index.php

You can enter your class - your students are equivalent to grade 12 (17-18 year olds) in the U.S.A.

If you have email, hopefully someone will contact you. We do have some others already there, but none in a class size that is close to yours.

Hopefully this works!

[sbalzotti]

Hi, neither one of my computers uses the default email (ours are web-based). Is there any way to see the email addresses of the contact as opposed to a direct link that won't work for me? Thanks, Sheri

[Addict]

Sheri, mousing over the link will show their email in the lower left corner of your browser (in 98% of browsers) - it is after the "mailto:"

Also, you can right click the link and select "copy link location" or something similar and paste it into something to see the email...

[SwedenTeacher]

I teach students in 7th grade (12-13 year olds) in Sweden. I would like to have email friends for my class from students in the U.S. I think this would be a great writing activity and a great way for them to learn more English. Would anybody teaching 4th- 7th grade be intrested?

[Addict]

SwedenTeacher -

Be sure to check here: http://www.theteacherscorner.net/penpals/index.php

We have several every day that sign up over there. You can contact a class already listed or register for someone to contact you.

[Chazova]

Addict,
thank you so much. I haven't seen your reply, sorry, but it seems I found what I need here on this map.

[britishnewt]

Hello. My name is John Catlin and I am looking for keypals for my junior high school kids here in Japan. I have about 20 interested thus far but instead of email my fellow teachers and I thought we would take another tact this year. We made a forum similar to this one so the kids can communicate. The idea is that when pen-pals are one on one it is easy to break the connection but as a group they can keep communicating even if one person drops out. We have done everything we could to make it safe and it is impossible for anyone to get into the site unless we put them in ourselves. If anyone has interested junior high school students please let me know.
Thank you,
John Catlin

[hakonlyche]

Hi.
I just accessed this page, since I might be interested in key-pals (internet-pen-pals) for my class. Butby reading some of the messages on the forum, I am not sure that the page i very active.

Just checking out through this thread.

Looking forward to hearing from someone. Basically, I am interested in hearing if this page is a good contact page for finding other classes, and how you atually do the communication part. Does the kids use their private mail adresses?

Lots of questions, hope you don't get scared from answering.

Håkon

[Addict]

Håkon,

You can connect with other classes using our map: http://www.theteacherscorner.net/penpals/index.php (http://www.theteacherscorner.net/forums/../penpals/index.php)

You can use email or traditional mail. You can discuss this with whoever you match up with. We do recommend using your school address or school email address (if available) for communicating, just for safety purposes.

[asmagda]

Hello:-)
My name's Aśka, I'm an English teacher from Poland. I'd like my students (they're 13-16) to practise English as much as possible and I think writing emails to students in other countries is a great idea.
I'm not sure what I should do to make it possible. Can anyone help me? Thanks:-)

[asmagda]

Hello:-)
Can anyone tell me what age is each grade, I'm confused.