General Social Network Tools vs. Collaborative Web 2.

0 Education Platforms
Tim DiScipio Founder Dr. Rita Oates VP Education

www.epals.com tim@epals.com
TCEA Booth #1423
ePals, Inc. Confidential

A recent Columbia University study of college students found that 94% were sharing personal information on Facebook that they had not intended to make public.

Recent Facebook Statistics

20 million minors on Facebook 7.5 million younger than 13 5 million younger than 10 Fastest-growing user base: ages 8-13

What are Mass Market social networks good for?

Twitter: connect teachers on happenings andevents and brief communication; parents with homework and tests
Fast, push-out info

Facebook: publicize school events; name with a face; building friends / project network and group discussion; RSVPs

When Teachers Are Asked Why They Selected Facebook / Twitter etc To Use In The Classroom
#1 Answer: I m familiar with it as my own personal communication tool #2 Answer: I m not aware of other products

#3 Answer: Saw a teacher demo at a conference

What are Mass Market social networks not good for?

Safety & Policy Management Role-based permissions at customized and administrator levels Not always on-task Students under age 13 ( age of consent ) Archiving / Storage ..building a legacy of work Privacy - personal info tracking / advertising School / District deployment

What are Mass Market social networks not good for?

Not curricular in functionality Require more time to complete collaborative tasks Require outside third-party applications be used to complete those tasks ..needing additional username/password accounts = web sprawl They do not integrate other K12 third-party apps which are relevant

General Market Social Network Tools

Most breach US school usage & safety policies Usage can easily put student names and schoolwork with teacher comments out on the open Web forever No support / training / professional development team

An Actual School District Policy Excerpt to District Users On A Certain Product They Use
Remember that __________ is not an acceptable storage solution. Do not keep official docs here Do not use ___________ for storage of student data or other secure information.

District Excerpts On User Support

When you have a technical issue with _________, there is not a lot we can do to assist you. This also means that __________ will update the tool when __________decides to update the tool. This will happen without announcement and may be (understandably) unsettling to some of you.

We are not made aware of changes in advance, and have no ability to control the release of new features or functionality. - _____________ Public Schools

Here are some companies providing K-12 focused online products:

Are We Teaching Students the Proper 21st Century Skills?

We know they should be digital and online but does that mean anywhere with anyone? What kinds of communication and net skills are they acquiring going from nothing directly to Facebook?

 Do students have a public and/or private space for their work? Are students focused, on-task and free of distraction at the moment of learning and critical thinking?

Social Learning Theory

Lev Vygotzky (1935)

Learning is cognitive development through social interaction with adult / instructor guidance and peer collaboration.
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What Is Your Technology Provider s Business Model?

K-12 Edu Providers
Free Subscription-based usage May be e-rate eligible Educational content sponsors

Facebook / Twitter
Advertising User profile data capture to sell to marketers

Are schools mindful of their obligations for the personal and schoolwork privacy of students? How will we protect student privacy under FERPA in the context of commercial market profiling of students? Is there school liability when something goes wrong?

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Districts indicate students are less likely to challenge a school-based solution with inappropriate behavior

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The Largest and Fastest Growing K-12 Social Learning Network

Leading Provider of Safe K12 Collaboration Technology

www.epals.com
ePals, Inc. Confidential

Customizing and Managing The Digital Learning and Teaching Eco-System Moving Away From One-Off Resources and Solutions, Each with Unique Usernames and Passwords Enterprise-level deployment

Internet s largest and fastest growing K-12 social learning network, reaching 25M+ teachers and students in 200 countries and territories Leading provider of safe, policy-managed collaborative K12 technology and virtual workspace tools Leader in project-based and community-based methodologies that produce literacy and meaningful learning online

ePals Products Bring 21st Century Learning to Schools

> Allows students and their teachers to locate, connect with and work collaboratively on projects with another class down the street and around the world. > Gives students, parents, teachers and administrators a secure way to communicate online, offers instant translation in 35 languages, and allows administrators to establish school-safe usage policies. > A virtual workspace supporting collaborative learning and projects through social media tools, access to high-quality content, digital storage areas and ePals SchoolMail and Global Community. > Curriculum-based service for enhancing reading, writing and critical thinking skills by matching students with ementor pen pals and high quality genre-based books & materials.

Global Community Membership ePals is a Safe Online Classroom Community

700,000

Reaching 25 million

Students Teachers

Home School Parents

Classroom

Homeschool

ePals activities are developed for classrooms. Only educators or parents set up collaborative partnerships. Activities built for independent student learning and teacher lesson plans or classroom activities.
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www.epals.com

Home Page

ePals SchoolSafe Desktop and SchoolSafe

Enabling schools and classrooms to connect and collaborate with next generation learning
CONNECT
 Largest social learning network globally. Collaborative projects, community discussions, global classroom connections in a safe environment.

ePals Solutions Create a Unified Framework

COMMUNICATE
 Enterprise-grade communications solution for K-12. Robust policy management and embedded instructional value.

COLLABORATE
 Social learning virtual workspace designed for projectbased learning and group collaboration -- schoolwork / documents all reside in one place.

LEARN
 Curriculum-based literacy program matches students with e-mentors to enhance reading, writing and critical thinking skills. First in a series of learning applications built on the ePals platform.

ePals solutions enable policy-managed access to third party applications and services such as Microsoft Office & Web Apps, Skype, Schoolsafe Applications

Who belongs to the ePals Global Community?

> 700,000 educators Millions of students who speak 136 different languages In 200 countries and territories

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Why Schools Use ePals

Safe platform for 21st Century collaboration Connect with approved foreign and domestic classrooms On-task and self-directed learning Home-to-School Connection / Rural School Reach Store and share content and school documents, use Web 2.0 tools Enterprise-grade and robust platform built to scale Policy-management with roles and permissions granted Teacher supervised

ePals Differentiators
1. Designed specifically for K12 safety and curricular functionality 2. Experts in project-based learning and virtual collaboration 3. Policy-managed and configures to school usage-safety policy 4. Expertise on large scale deployments, setup and training 5. Pioneer in social learning

Chinese and US High School Students use ePals for Global Studies, learning about economy and practicing language
China
Yaodong Chens Students in Guangxi, China practicing English with their ePals at Patrick Henry High School in California, USA

California

ePALS helps my students practice English. ePALS is introducing many Chinese students to authentic English and will help teachers in China use web-based language teaching more effectively.
- Yaodong Chen, teacher in Southern China who has connected more than 700 of his students with native English speakers via ePALS in the last 8 years

Virtual Communities + Curricular Collaboration Tools + Curricular Content = Powerful Student Engagement

 A safe K-12 virtual workspace where tools and docs reside in one safe online space with authorized classmates, teachers and mentors Tools - email, blogs, wikis, shared portfolios and media galleries Schoolwork / documents - Word, PowerPoints, files and rich media Contact Groups - Teachers and classmates Shared environment with project and document access Open architecture Selected by International Baccalaureate to be their new global collaboration and learning platform for 700,000 users in 140 countries

ePals LearningSpace in one school

Teacher view

My Homepage

Teachers and students can create profiles seen only by their virtual classroom and school community

Classes

Assignments

Calendar

Groups

Connections

Files

Authenticated Homepage

Inbox

Moderate Mail: Teacher Task

Address Book

Moderation and Policy Badges

Smart Address Book

1st Email to Embed Language Translation into an Email Browser (1999)

Educational Partners

The class collaborates in the cloud

- and in the classroom.

Imagine This

My tech staff and I are on a conference call. Somebody asks a question about the new schoolschool-safe global collaboration platform we are pilot testing

So we log-in to: log-

and discover that school is in session. session. ON A SNOW DAY!

Shakespeare on Snow Days

An entire classroom of students logged into their ePals LearningSpace on an emergency snow day to complete their Shakespeare project. The teacher never asked them to, she never participated, she just watched the teamwork, self-directed learning and critical thinking all happening virtually on a snow day off!

The amount of writing that our fourth graders are doing in LearningSpace has increased 9 10 times over the last year The quality of work has increased because they now see and comment on each other s work.
- ePals LearningSpace Teacher in NY

anywhere and anytime they want

So do their brothers and sisters in the elementary schools.

Mrs. Arnold s 4th Grade Classroom Blog

Digital-age learners of all ages can benefit from using web 2.0 collaboration technology.

Classrooms can connect to collaborate in the schools

Communication and Collaboration Can Make A Real Difference

Providing a cloud-based, school-safe Web 2.0 collaboration platform can inspire digital native students to make schoolwork part of their real lives outside of school. The power of authentic, collaborative engagement can transform a class into a connected learning community.

But just when we thought we were done

The Multimedia Started

Students have many talents they can t always use during the school day. The ePals LearningSpace global collaboration platform is 21st Century, Web 2.0, social, communicative, collaborative, multimedia, anytime and anywhere just like them. Technology can empower students and teachers to do some of their best work. For some students and teachers, that means Multimedia.

We found students had skills and abilities we didn t know about in their projects and sharing!

Writing and Recording Original Music: Hamlet as a Pop Song

LearningSpace Case Studies

More LearningSpace Case Studies

Your presenters:
Tim DiScipio, Founder tim@epals.com Rita Oates, PhD, VP, Education Markets roates@corp.epals.com @ritaoates See case studies of LearningSpace in K12 schools: http://learningspace.epals.com