Since 1996, ePals, the leading provider of school-safe collaborative learning products for K-12 students, teachers and parents, has been dedicated to helping learners from around the world connect and interact with each other online in a safe, educational environment. ePals connects teachers, students, parents and educators from around the world, enabling them to communicate and collaborate on academic and cultural projects and establish international friendships.

Our global community reaches more than 11 million people and more than 130,000 classrooms in over 200 countries and territories. ePals technology enables these learners, who speak over 136 different languages, to connect, share, collaborate and learn.

Security is of utmost importance to ePals. Since 1996, we have focused on creating a safe and secure environment for students to learn and explore.

• ePals SchoolMail is designed to comply with COPPA, CIPA and FERPA.
• We have added safety features to SchoolMail, including built-in email content and language filters, to help ensure appropriateness of email messages.
• Our spam and virus controls help prevent unwanted, inappropriate messages and scan attachments for viruses.
• ePals forums are screened to ensure appropriate content.
• Adult users have the ability to set access levels, thereby limiting who can receive and send emails to student ePals users.

For more advice on internet safety, see our ePals Internet Safety Tips

Members include Parents, Teacher and Students. However, to participate Parents and Teachers (and students over 18) must have a approved profile. See How To Get Started.

ePals provides students with opportunities to develop many skills imperative to success in the 21st century. These include computer literacy, critical-thinking abilities, global awareness, collaborative skills and multicultural friendships. ePals email tools are the first student email with built-in instant language translation to help break down language barriers and increase cross-cultural learning. Our email tools have intuitive web-based interfaces which allow children to become familiar with the email system in a short period of time. As an additional bonus, students become eager and improved writers when given an audience, other than their teachers, and something of value about which to write.

Teachers will have:

• access to tools that will foster highly-effective learning environments, while saving "prep" time;
• exposure to successfully implemented programs, as well as the framework for replicating them;
• opportunity to provide authentic learning experiences for your students such as connecting with a classroom in the rain forest while you study the rain forest;
• access to lesson plans and collaborative projects, complete with affiliated links, "boosting" content;
• access to thousands of classrooms around the world who are actively seeking partners for educational collaborations.

Grow your own learning community by adding your students' families into your ePals network. Share your students' progress and success, your class newsletter; use our translation tool to communicate with your class' many language groups. Through ePals email and blogs, you can connect families to their children's learning. Encourage the parents of your students to join ePals today. By having an approved profile with us, parents are now within your learning network!

All of ePals services and features are free of charge.

Visit our feedback form to contact ePals Customer Support.

ePals protects the privacy of our users. Click here to see our privacy policy.

ePals has many features that promote global awareness, elevate learning opportunities and foster community cohesiveness. These features include:

• market-leading SchoolMail, a secure email system;
• award-winning SchoolBlog;
• file sharing and storage;
• personalized homepage;
• language translation tools;
• Ask an ePals Teacher;
• forums – for teachers, families, and students;
• lesson plans, instructional guides;
• collaborative projects; and
• In2Books.

With ePals' support and suite of services, you will take your students on a safe and friendly learning adventure. ePals is an effective way for students and teachers to find their voices, meet friends from around the world, and gain 21st century literacy skills. At ePals you can

• Connect with your students: Help students find global ePals with whom to communicate and build friendships. Monitor your students' emails to keep track of their writing development, guide their global awareness and ensure their online safety.

   

• Connect with your students families: Keep in touch with families, share student presentations and introduce class ePals via classroom blogs.

   

• Connect with other teachers: Communicate with other teachers in ePals forums. Collaborate on ePals projects, offer and receive advice at Ask an ePals teacher.

   

• Connect with classrooms around the world: Find classrooms across the world that is interested in learning about a topic with your class. You can create and publicize your own project or choose from an ePals project.

   

In2Books is ePals' evidenced-based curriculum that fosters reading, writing and critical thinking skills. The curriculum has been shown to significantly improve students' literacy skills and love of learning. In2Books promotes literacy across the curriculum by matching students with adult pen pals who read the same books and correspond online about important issues in the books. The books are carefully selected to align with literacy, social studies and science standards. This learning experience is reinforced in the classroom with the study of the applicable genre, in-depth discussion and carefully designed curricula.

Click here to see the ePals.com site map.

You may have decided to join ePals on your own, or you may be part of a school or school district who has joined on your behalf. Depending on how you signed up, you will have slightly different methods of getting registered, setting up accounts and customizing your ePals account.

Signing up as part of a larger group
If your school or school district joined ePals on your behalf, you will be sent a user name and temporary password for both yourself and your students. After logging in for the first time at www.epals.com, you will be prompted to choose a permanent password.

You may now customize your personal information in the My Profile area. On the Homepage of your SchoolMail account, there is an interactive tutorial if you would like to watch a detailed overview of ePals. Click on the ePals Tour button on the Homepage navigation bar. Please note, that as part of a larger group, your ePals account has been customized for your school; you may not be using all of the features mentioned. If you have questions about which ePals features are being used in your school, please contact your ePals Administrator. Your next step will be to create your profile (see instructions below).

Signing up on my own
If you are signing up on your own, you start the process by clicking on the Join Now button on the right side of the homepage. After you have verified your email address, we will provide a link to continue registration. Please fill out the requested information, including choosing a user name and password. Once you read and accept ePals terms and conditions, you will be directed to create your profile. A profile is needed to have full access to the ePals site. Please note that students cannot create profiles, only teachers, parents and other adult learners are permitted to do so.

Most log in difficulties, fall into one of these four areas:

1. Username Problems
   Your username is the part of your ePals email address before the @ sign. For example, if your email address were support@epals.com, you'd enter 'support' in the username field. If you are a SchoolMail user, you will have a username that includes more, such as "name@district.epals.com." In this case, the user name is name@district.

   If you've forgotten your username, contact us giving us as much information about your account as possible. Since you are unable to access your ePals account, please provide an alternate email address where we can reach you.

2. Password Problems
   Passwords are case sensitive. If you have forgotten your password, use Forget password. If a student on a monitored account has forgotten his or her password, we can help you with that as well. Remember to give us a working email address so we can reply to you.
3. Settings Problems
   To be able to use ePals, your browser must be set up to accept cookies. See more information on cookie settings.

   If you are still having difficulties logging in after checking these common problems, please contact us for further assistance.

Don't worry. You'll be surprised at how easy-to-use ePals is. We have the following downloadable guides, all of which include detailed step-by-step instructions for using particular features of ePals:

• The Administrator's Guide to ePals' SchoolMail
• ePals SchoolBlog Teacher's Guide
• ePals SchoolMail, written by ePals member, Janetta Garton
• Internet Safety Tips

Your ePals profile, and what you choose to include in it, will be very important to the likelihood of success with your ePals experience. Until you have an approved profile, you will not be able to send or receive emails, or actively search for, or be considered for, collaborative partnerships. Your profile is your ePals identity to teachers and parents all over the world. The more detailed and specific you are in your profile, the better chance you will have for successfully matching with partner classes and families.

Profiles are usually reviewed by ePals staff for approval within 24 hours of submission. Profiles that are not approved are usually rejected for not containing enough detail and information that will help you be successful.

A successful profile includes:

1. age-range of class (age in years as well as grade level);
2. language(s) the students speak;
3. location of the classroom;
4. location of desired partner;
5. methods with which you would like to collaborate (email, postal mail, blogs, video conferences) If you are interested in a particular method of communication, but do not know how to undertake it (i.e. you want to do a video conference but don't know how) please indicate this.);
6. Length of desired collaboration (school year, semester, a week, one-time exchange, etc.);
7. Frequency of desired collaboration (weekly, monthly, at holidays);
8. Topic of desired collaboration (the more specific the better. Global warming is better than science).

Yes. Click here to see the following Sample Profiles:

• Teacher Profile
  
• Parent Profile
  
• Individual Profile (i.e. Higher Ed student)
  

Carefully read the comments our moderators have sent to you. These comments will save you time! Most of all make sure you've answered the following questions in your profile description:

• Which countries would you like your ePals to come from?
• What language(s) are you interested in your students using?
• What subject areas would you like to collaborate on?
• How often will you be able to communicate with your ePals?
• How long would you like an ePals partnership to last: a day, a month, a year?
• Describe the interests and hobbies of your students.
• What ideas do you have for learning topics and projects?

ePals does not accept profiles from anyone under the age of 18. If you are a university student over the age of 18 studying education for example, you will be able to submit a profile. If you are under the age of 18, your parent or teacher will have to submit a profile on your behalf. Once he or she is approved, you can participate as a monitored student under your teacher's or parent's approved profile and account.

Absolutely! Many of our ePals members are parents, seeking to improve their children's language skills, increase their children's global awareness or simply to form new friendships. We have a large community of parents who homeschool their children or are families who want to find individual ePals for their children. Once your profile has been approved, you can search for other families to partner with.

Once your profile has been approved, which usually occurs within 24 hours, you can begin to send and receive email, and contact partner classrooms. While you are waiting for your profile to be approved, you can search for partner classes, just to get a sense of who is available. You may not contact anyone until your profile has been approved.

While you are waiting for your profile to be approved, you can participate in our forums.

This is most likely because you have left out some required information from your profile. If all of the fields are filled out, and you continue to have problems, contact us and we will help you to determine what the problem is.

When your profile has been reviewed, ePals will send you a message, which you will see when you log in. It will indicate whether your profile has been approved or if changes are required. You can find this information in the comment box on your account home page. Please follow our direction, make the suggested changes, and re-submit your profile for approval. Again, it will be reviewed within 24 hours.

Profiles remain active until you delete them. If you change your goals, or want to undertake a different project, we suggest you edit your profile as often as possible to reflect those changes. That way, you won't be getting contacted for matches that don't interest you. If a profile has been dormant for a very long period of time, it may be automatically deactivated. Deactivated profiles are saved, and can later be reactivated.

With an approved profile, you are now able to participate in all aspects of ePals. You will be able to send and receive email. You will be able to search and find partner classrooms for collaborative learning experiences. You will have access to ePals' lesson plans, projects, and instructional resources for your classroom. ePals' forums will be open to both you and your monitored students. Welcome.

Each time you log in to ePals, you will be taken to your homepage. Your homepage will have tabs for Mail, My Profile and What's New.

• The Mail tab will have everything you need for sending, receiving and editing both your own email and your students' monitored email accounts.
• The My Profile tab includes a copy of your current, active profile as well as all of your personal information.
• The What's New tab enables you to see a listing of the newest profiles on ePals.

If you joined ePals through SchoolMail, you may have a customizable homepage. As part of a larger group, your homepage will look the same as the one seen by all other teachers in your group, and any customized images or text that appears is the same as what your students see. Your ePals SchoolMail Administrator chooses the image and welcome text that appears on your homepage. Your administrator may use the text and image areas of the homepage to keep you informed of school or district news and events – be sure to check for changes each time you log in!

Locate the My Profile button on your homepage. In My Profile, you will find private, personal information, as well as a copy of your current, active profile. You can make changes to your name, password, languages, grades and subjects here. Remember, passwords are case sensitive.

After you have an approved profile, you can now search for and contact partner classrooms. Currently, there are seven ways to search for a partner classroom on ePals:

• Keyword Search by common terms, such as book club or Spanish language
• Project match Search for another classroom interested in the same ePals Project
• New profiles for the day Search all profiles approved that day
• Advanced search Search according to parameters you set
• Map search Search based on geographic location
• ePals Wanted, Teacher Talk Answer or Post on Forums for Partners
• Ongoing Projects, Teacher Talk Answer or Post on Forums for Partners

There are over 130,000 profiles in our database. We typically add several thousand new profiles each month.

Experience has shown us that detailed and specific profiles receive far more requests for partnerships. If you have not received any requests for partnerships, re-read your profile to see if you can add more detail.

Another tip: If you want to find a partner, don't wait for one to come to you. Go out and search for one yourself! Use ePals search tools and find some classrooms that meet your needs. With over 130,000 to choose from, you will surely find a match.

If you have used the general search, and have not found a partner classroom, try the advanced search. Start out with as many details filled in as you can. If you aren't successful, open up some of your parameters. For example, instead of limiting your age range to a one year span, open it up to a 4 year span. Or, instead of asking for a classroom from France, seek a classroom of native French-speakers, but who may live elsewhere. Vary your terms – different terms are more common in different parts of the world. Keep trying and feel free to contact ePals support if needed.

Since ePals is a global community, you will be contacting classrooms who may have very different school schedules than yours. Perhaps the classroom you are contacting is on vacation or, perhaps they are already involved in a partnership. Keep trying! Ttry clicking on the "search all" button on the profiles. This will display all of the approved profiles on ePals, in order of the most recently approved. The newest classrooms are unlikely to have formed partnerships yet, and will certainly be looking for some. See if any of these classrooms meet your needs. Finally, feel free to contact us with your specific questions.

In the classroom or from home, guide your students' learning with a global, online perspective. ePals provides learning units, instructional resources, best practices and member-created projects all arranged by topic. ePals teachers help us have the best and most efficient resources available for you to use in your classroom. As well, ePals continuously works with groups of educators to develop collaborative projects that include the following key components:

• Interactive: Students research and share data with global peers
• Cross-curricular: Math, sciences, languages, technology, social and cultural studies
• Inclusive: Projects accommodate multiple learning styles and age ranges

One of the goals of ePals is to provide classes around the world with the opportunity to use tools available via ePals and participate in exciting collaborative projects. Email is an easy way to begin these collaborations. We hope and expect that teachers will use email communications as a starting point.

You can begin by choosing a partner classroom and together, choose a project. Or choose a project, and then use ePals search tools to find a partner classroom. Our projects are intended as guidelines. Feel free to customize them to suit your class and your personal goals.

Once you have a project and a partner, you should discuss and decide the following issues:

1. Project start and end dates;
2. Number of emails to be exchanged;
3. Subject matter of emails;
4. Length of time between emails;
5. Geographical focus of research (will students research their own country, their ePals' country, or other areas of the world?)
6. Will students work alone, in pairs, in small groups, or as a class?

The benefits of teacher collaboration are great. ePals offers many opportunities to experience collaboration. Look for relevant discussions in Ongoing Projects, on the Teacher Talk forum. If you don't find a pertinent discussion, please start one. All ePals members will benefit from your experiences. We look forward to hearing how you have collaborated with global partners!

ePals wants to hear from you! Without doubt, the teachers in our global community are an incredible resource. While each member's experiences alone are a significant resource, the sum of our experience is invaluable.

If, as an ePals teacher or parent, you have a project you'd like others to participate in, please post an ad on our Teacher Talk forum, in Ongoing Projects.

If, as an ePals teacher or parent you have a story of success that you'd like to share with us, we invite you to lead the ePals community by sharing the details of that success. To do so, submit to become a featured teacher on the homepage by emailing us.

The following languages are built-in to our communication tools: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Korean, and Spanish.

The Instant Language Translation tool, available within your email, instantly translates text to and from Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, German, Japanese, English, Korean and Chinese. You may translate messages you receive, as well as messages you write. The automatic translation software is effective for conveying the "gist" of your message, and will not be a perfect translation.

To translate a received message:
Go to your inbox and open the message you would like to translate. Click on "Translate this message from," choose a language pair and click "Translate."

To translate an email before sending:

1. First, type your message, click on "Translate this message from," choose a language pair and click "Translate." To finish up, hit "send."
2. To translate text from other files, websites, etc.:
3. Highlight chosen text; click "Edit" in the menu bar and select "Copy."
4. Click "Instant Language Translation" in the "Communication Tools" section.
5. Click in the blank box. Click "Edit" in the menu bar and select "Paste".
6. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Translate this message from".
7. Select the appropriate language pair; click "Translate."

 

ePals forums are discussion boards which provide ongoing public discussion with other teachers, students and parents around the world. On our forums, you will be able to read, post, and reply to topics of interest to you. All messages to ePals forums are screened. Those messages that are posted on our forums can be read and responded to by anyone within the ePals community. However, adults are only permitted to respond to messages on Teacher Talk, Parent Talk and project forums that are designated for teachers. Students under the age of 18 are permitted to post on Student Talk, the appropriate project forums and our book club forums.

We have forums available for all members. To view a current listing of forums available to teachers, parents and students, click here.

Within most of our forums, discussions are organized by topic categories. Within each category there are individual threads - ongoing conversations about the same topic. The best way to get a feel for ePals forums is to go to the forums, choose one and click on a thread that is of interest to you. From here you can read the breadth and depth of the community discussions going on between ePals members.

ePals forums are open to all of our members. Because we are a global community of members, we expect everyone to participate in our forums with respect. We have developed a series of policies and tips that will guide you and your students in using our forums appropriately. Please click here to view our Forum Moderation Policies.

ePals reserves the right to edit messages. Our editing usually involves grammar, punctuation and spelling changes. Because many of our users are non-native English speakers, ePals forums function as a method of learning and improving English language skills. For this reason, we encourage our members to model great English language use when participating in our forums.

Due to the volume of messages that are submitted from our large, global community, your message will usually appear within 24 hours of submission.

There are many reasons why a message can be returned to you. Some of the most common reasons for returning a message are:

1. Your message contained inappropriate content, personally identifying information, or was incomprehensible.
2. You are trying to start a new topic, when it already exists on the forums. Before starting a new topic, read through the forum to see if another member has already started a discussion about your topic.
3. You are an adult attempting to post on the student forums.
4. You are a student under the age of 18, attempting to post on the adult forums.
5. Your post is too short (usually less than 10 words) and adds little value to the ongoing discussion. An example of such a post is "I agree totally," or "I like math."
6. Submissions can be returned if there are too many errors or if it is written entirely in slang or colloquial language. Because many of our forum users are learning English as a second language, we like the forums to model proper English language use.

No. In order to preserve the collaborative nature of our community, at this time we do not permit any commercial solicitations. This includes posts advertising any business, service or competing website.

Yes. ePals is open for use from anywhere at any time for both adults and students. To access ePals from a home computer, a student needs only to know his or her user name and password and have internet access.

By visiting the forum that you have asked your students to participate in, you can enter a student name in the search box that appears at the top of each forum page. When you click "search", all the postings that have been written by that student name will appear.

Because our forums are moderated, student submissions to a forum do not stop at a teacher inbox for approval. However, all messages are screened at our end.

If a message submitted by a student to our forum contains significantly worrisome content, ePals will contact either the teacher or parent affiliated with the student account.

Available to the adult members of our community, Ask an ePals Teacher is a service that brings together educators and experts from around the world and connects them with people looking for answers to questions that are specific to education. Within our global community, we not only have unique and varied experiences, we have members who are experts in many different areas of education. Imagine if you could connect with someone who knows the answers to your questions, on any topic, at any time!

To get started, find Ask an ePals Teacher at the bottom of the homepage. Enter your question into the field provided. This service requires an additional log in. Once you have logged in, you will see a pre-set form. Just fill in your birth date, your question, a title for your question and a topic of the question. Then post your question. It's that easy!

Ask an ePals teacher uses your birth date as another means of verifying your status as an adult member. You can choose not to show your age to the community by clicking the small box to the immediate right of your entered birth date.

Each time someone answers your question, you will receive an email alert to your ePals account.

Yes! Ask an ePals Teacher understands what your question or answer is about, and is clever enough to find related questions and answers automatically for you even if they're listed under a different topic. We will carefully select for you, based on your preferences, the questions and answers that are likely to be of interest to you. And, the more you use Ask an ePals Teacher, the better we get at understanding your interests. So go ahead, personalize Ask an ePals Teacher to match your interests.

ePals SchoolMail is the recognized leader in school-safe email for students in grades K-12. ePals SchoolMail provides multilingual email solutions to classes, schools, families and districts worldwide. With this easy-to-use product, educators can create protected, customized, collaborative environments.

You and your students will use ePals SchoolMail to interact with ePals all over the world. You can use ePals SchoolMail as you would any other email system. Again, depending on how you joined ePals, you may not have access to all of the features listed below. If you have questions, please contact your SchoolMail Administrator.

With ePals SchoolMail, you will find the following features:

• Monitored Email
• Instant Language Translation
• Virus Checking
• Anti-Spam Filters
• Spell-Checker
• File Sharing & Storage
• Manuals & Tutorials

Monitored email is the method by which teachers or parents can oversee their students' or childrens' email activity. Administrators, teachers or parents can create monitored accounts for each of their students or children. Teacher and parent accounts allow you to choose settings to automatically filter profanity and attachments and view every message sent or received for accounts that you create and monitor. Filters may be adapted for each student.

What are Filters?
ePals SchoolMail offers filters as an additional method of security for student accounts. You may choose between four levels of protection, and may set individual parameters for each student, or one level for all.

The access level determines where students can send email to and where they can receive email from. For all users, ePals sets a default access level to the ePals Global Community level, permitting communication with anyone who has epals.com as part of their email address. However, ePals school administrators can vary the student access levels anywhere within the following range:

• Class/monitor: Students are limited to emailing other students who have the same monitor/teacher.
• School: Students are limited to emailing students and teachers in the same school.
• District: This option is only available if your ePals system includes multiple schools. Under this level, students are limited to emailing students and teachers at schools within your system.
• ePals SchoolMail: This option limits students to emailing people who use ePals SchoolMail in their schools.
• ePals: This option allows students to email any address that contains epals.com as part of the domain.
• Internet: This option allows students to email anyone with an email address, whether they are in your district, part of ePals, or using the Internet through other means.

Messages that come and go from the monitored email accounts belonging to your students are stored in the Incoming and Outgoing folders on your home account page. These can include messages you need to approve before they can go further as well as copies of messages that have already reached the intended recipients. What you receive here is determined by the filter level you have set.

Enter your Monitored Mail page, and click on the Incoming (or Outgoing) tab. Highlight a message's subject, and click on it to read it. Once you have read the message, click on the "approve" button to approve it. Once you do so, the message will be sent on to your student's mailbox and a copy will go to your processed mail folder.

Yes. You will have a copy of all emails you approve in your Processed Mail Folder. The copies will remain there until you move or delete them.

If, after reading a message, you choose not to approve it, you can click the delete button. This will automatically delete the message. No copy will go to your student's mailbox. You can also move the email into one of your other folders, particularly if you'd like to keep a record of this email or store it for later discussion with a student.

No. If the email is approved, the student's email will remain in his or her mailbox. It would only be deleted from your own mailbox.

Often, a student's homeroom teacher, or the subject matter teacher, works best for the role of Monitor. We do not recommend setting up more than one account per student. This results in too much confusion for the student, who will find it difficult to remember which ePals account he used to communicate with his or her ePal.

The word "blog" is a shortened version of "web logging." A blog gives you an online "home" where you can concentrate all of your class and student work. A blog is different than a web page because readers can add their own comments to the blog.

Students, teachers, administrators and parents can all benefit from the flexibility and power of ePals SchoolBlog. Designed by the leader in school-safe tools, ePals' SchoolBlog is an educationally relevant approach to blogging to restrict access and user functionality and keep the blog focused on classroom activities. We call this our "walled garden" approach which gives the teacher the control to "moderate" what content appears on the site. These "moderation" functions are built in to each of our services.

ePals SchoolBlog, winner of Technology and Learning's Award of Excellence, includes the following features:

• Searchable archives, so past postings are easily accessed
• Personalized Domain
• Allows multi-media posting
• Policy Managed
• Calendar
• Surveys
• Design Templates
• Classroom-Only, Parents-Only, and Public Areas
• Web-Based Management and Storage
• Rich Text Editor
• Manuals & Tutorials

In a school setting, blogs are a great way for teachers to interact with students and their families, as well as with other classes. By posting homework assignments, long-term projects, field trips and classroom themes, blogs provide parents with a window into classroom activities. Parents will appreciate an updated schedule of school events, notification of students' academic performances, online exhibits of student work and presentations, easy access to permission slips, consent forms and more.

Not only can ePals SchoolBlog be used for many educational applications, it is simple and easy to use. It provides a strong web presence in classrooms, and enables users to collaborate and stay informed through automatic content email updates.

Academic goals for the 21st century involve many new skill sets for students. ePals SchoolBlog targets those skills, in an engaging and interesting tool. ePals SchoolBlog:

• improves student literacy and learning;
• creates anywhere, anytime learning opportunities;
• boosts educator professional development;
• provides students with a real audience.

The first step to creating your own blog is to sign up for ePals SchoolBlog. If you are part of an entire school or school district that has signed up for ePals SchoolBlog, your ePals Administrator will have completed much of this background work for you. You will simply receive an email including your activation notice. Go to the URL specified in the activation notice, and enter your username and password. You may now begin to configure and add content to your blog.

If you are signing up on your own to establish a blog, on your homepage, find the ePals SchoolBlog tab from a drop down menu on the navigation bar. Click on the Get it Now button to get started. You will be guided through the sign up process. ePals will send you an email notification to activate your account. Go to the URL specified in the activation notice, and enter your username and password. You may now begin to set up and add content to your blog.

ePals SchoolBlog is very user-friendly. You will find much of the set-up process to be straight-forward. However, if you would like step-by-step guidance, please download our ePals SchoolBlog Teacher's Guide.

To add content to your blog, you must go to the navigation bar which is typically located on the lower left hand side. Find the Create Content heading, and, depending on which type of content you want to add, click on the appropriate title. By default, all content must be approved before it is published on your site. To find out more details about adding content to your blog, including how to keep content on your hompage, how to stay visible and to make your blog "sticky", please read through our ePals SchoolBlog Guide.

Blogs are a great way to keep parents updated on important assignments. There are several different ways you can achieve this goal. All important dates can be added to your Events calendar. To do this, access the "Events or Assignment" button from the navigation bar. Some teachers like to create a parent's corner on their homepages so that families have access at a quick glance. To do this, create a blog entry, and mark it as "Feature on Homepage." Anything you would like to keep at the top of this section should be marked "sticky". You can also create a forum just for parents, where parents can have a running dialogue about deadlines, lessons and activities in your class.

The people who can access your blog are called users. If you have joined as part of an entire school or school district, your ePals Administrator will likely set up the parameters of who can use your blog. Most blogs are open to you, your students, your students' families, and perhaps some additional school employees, such as the principal or IT director of the school. If you are joining on your own, you will create the users who can see and participate in your blog.

If you have joined as part of a larger group, your ePals Administrator will likely create the parameters concerning who may use your blog. You may check with him or her if you would like to change it.

If you have joined alone, you are permitted to add users at your discretion.

Adding Users Manually

To add users manually, click the "Administer" link in the navigation bar then click "Users" in the sub-menu that appears. You will see a list of all users currently registered on your site, along with their status (active or blocked), how long they have been registered, and the time they last accessed the site.

To add users to your site, click the "add/edit users" tab. Add basic information about them, including a unique username, email address, password and role

Some schools and school districts permit users to self-register. Check with your ePals Administrator for further information. If permitted, users will be given a URL for your site. Find the URL and look for a link entitled "Create New Account" (it is under the login form.) Click that link, enter desired username, email address, first and last names, and notes about why they would like an account. After completion and submission of the form, the registering user will receive an email containing his or her username and a password.

Remember, if a user self-registers, in order to be active, you will have to assign each one a role. To verify which users need to be activated, look in the "Moderation" block in the navigation bar.

Yes, all postings and comments are held as "not published" until you manually change them to "published."

If you are trying to view a page in Japanese and it looks like the characters are incorrect, please don't worry!

Because of the differences between character systems, many browsers and operating systems need to be specially set up to display Japanese characters.

Special note to Netscape users: In order to view ePALS in Japanese , you may need to adjust the font settings on your browser. Click on Edit, then Preferences. Choose Appearance. From Fonts, select "Use my default fonts, overriding page-specified fonts."

For more information on configuring your browser or operator system to view more languages, check your manual or visit the manufacturer's website:

• Apple
• Microsoft Windows
• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• AOL
• Firefox
• Opera

If it looks like you are logged into someone else's account, don't worry. This effect sometimes occurs when your proxy server remembers a page viewed by a previous user and displays it in your browser. You are not actually in that person's account and you are not able to access any private information.

In order to use ePals, your Bess filters will need to be adjusted by a system administrator. From the Bess Control Center, choose "Filter Control," and then "Filter Schedules." Select "Bess with Freemail" and then click "Modify Default Filter." Finally, click "Commit Schedule to Server."

It will take about 30 minutes for the changes to take effect. We suggest you log out and return after this time.

For more information, please visit http://www.n2h2.com/support/bess.php?device_type=g2100