E-Penpal Site for High School Students

[Edosan]

JALT CALL Members,

            I saw this and thought you may be interested in checking it out.

Regards,

            Edo Forsythe

I'd like to invite jr/sr high school teachers to try PikiFriends.

PikiFriends is a free online 'penpal' tool for junior and senior high schools worldwide. We've been helping students in many countries make great friendships using English for 3 years now. I'm the co-founder, and I'm using PikiFriends myself in my teaching at Showa Women's University Jr/Sr High School in Tokyo.

I created PikiFriends because I believe there is great value in using the internet to connect our students with their peers using English, as long as it's safe, easy to use, enjoyable for both teacher and learner, and properly blended with classroom teaching. Many teachers are catching on to this especially at the university level, and research has been showing very positive results.

On PikiFriends, students and teachers use a highly customized 'SNS' to communicate. It's like Facebook or Linkedin, but simplified and with features specifically for secondary education.

There's an optional curriculum which schools can purchase if they wish. Using the curriculum helps to achieve our 2 learner goals: improving English skills and building awareness of what it means to be a good digital citizen. You can see a sample textbook:
http://pikifriends.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/the_pikifriends_student_guide_sample.pdf

I invite all junior or senior high school teachers to sign up and try it. To sign up, please follow the directions on the homepage (www.pikifriends.net).

There's also the official PikiFriends blog with lots of info (check the links section there):
http://pikifriends.wordpress.com/
as well as a YouTube channel here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/pikifriends

Thanks so much and please get in touch with me if you have any questions.

PikiFriends pikifriends.net

 

Edo Forsythe

English Lecturer

Hirosaki Gakuin University

fors...@hirogaku-u.ac.jp

 

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JALT CALL SIG Officer: Member-at-Large

sig-membe...@jaltcall.org

 

 

 

[Kevin Ryan]

I'd also like to second that invitation. The developer is a colleague and friend, Jeff Dion, whose first priority is student safety online. This website is more than a penpal tool, it allows students to connect in a lot of different ways. One of the best tools out there. Get your class signed up. 

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Kevin Ryan from Tokyo, Japan
tokyokevin at gmail dot com