What is a keypal? In Internet jargon, pen pals who exchange correspondence through electronic mail (e-mail) are called keypals. This term evolved because the writing was done via the keyboard rather than by pen. Keypal projects were among the first telecomputing activities to be tested online and remain the most popular in the educational arena, however, if not structured by the participating teachers, can become a nagging headache. Finding Keypals? Suggestion: Make sure to read the assignment below before beginning this exercise. Suppose your class is studying a particular foreign country and you would like your students to correspond with a similar class in this country. Explore two or three of the following sites to search for keypal partners in the country of your choice. Select whatever grade level you would be interested in. Some of these sites provide database searches, some link you to other keypal sites, and some are teacher mailing lists to subscribe to in order to find keypals. Exploring takes time so be patient! How to Find Pen Pals (You will need to scroll down past the outline to get to the information on this page.) Tammy Payton of Loogootee Community Schools presents three different ways to find a class pen pal. For Tammy's complete article on the subject of keypals, see the following site: More Than Just Pen Pals; this article appeared on the Well Connected Educator with the Global School House website. eMail Classroom Exchange "The Email Classroom Exchange (ECE) epals search engine provides students with an opportunity to meet and correspond with other students from around the World! Search our online database of classrooms or add yours to our search engine for free." IECC - Intercultural E-Mail Classroom Connections The IECC (Intercultural E-Mail Classroom Connections) mailing lists are provided by St. Olaf College as a free service to help teachers and classes link with partners in other countries and cultures for e-mail classroom pen-pal and project exchanges. Classroom Connect Teacher Contact Database. Teacher Contact Database Search Form Internet Curriculum Connections Finding and Posting Descriptions of Classroom Projects That Use E-mail Pitsco's Launch to Keypals A database of (1) WWW links to keypal sites and (2) mailing lists for finding keypals.

Assignment Tele3 - Finding Keypals Submit a short report (via email) to your site trainer that includes specific keypal data that you found in this search (country, school, teacher name, grade level, etc.). Include the *specific* URL of the site(s) in which you found your keypals. Include any other information that you discovered in your exploration or any comments you have about the search. MAKE SURE to include the number and name of this assignment.