Community reviews for PenPal Schools

Overall, I feel there needs to be more interaction. The students were excited to see their pen pal's responses, yet many pen pals did not. There is a requirement and time limit for students to respond and many students never got a response from their pal.

I think this is awesome. It would be a fun tool to introduce to my students.

This website is a great teaching tool because it offers broad lesson plans that are being completed similarly in other classrooms so students can collaborate globally with other students. There are currently less than 50 lesson plan options on the website, but there is a large enough variety to be able to introduce this collaborate type of lesson at least a few times throughout the school year. Each lesson states how many other "active PenPals" are currently working on each. Connecting with students all over the World create an interesting learning environment for the students and also helps students get a better understanding of different cultures and environments that they would not usually be exposed to.

Overall, I think this is an amazing tool to utilize in the classroom to expand Global Citizenship. It opens up a variety of perspectives for the students. It is used with 6 grade and up, and could be tied to a Language or Social Studies lesson easily. I am impressed with this product!

I really like this especially because your students can view others responses from around the world. They are able to get the information from the site and then see how others around them and those who are across the world feel about these topics or how they apply to their life. I think this is a really neat tool to use if you want to get your students to understand a bit of perspective.

Pen Pals is a wonderful resource that can be used by all students. I like that the product included video content for each focused area and also provided follow-up questions for students to further investigate if they desired. This product is well-organized and easy to navigate no matter what age you are teaching. I think students could benefit from the use of this product because there is written information, pictures, and vocabulary words all provided on the same page which gives students a more in-depth understanding of different cultures. It is also a product that allows students to take a step further and get into contact with students of the cultures they are learning about. I think that for the middle school ages, this can be integrated into learning how to write letters and talk to people different from them.

I loved that it hit so many information literacy and digital citizenship skills with the students. It was easy to observe their work and it gave them hints about what a good answer would look like. On the teacher end, there were many options about what you could assess, and you could adjust what specific skills you wanted to grade. One downside was unresponsive pen pals. We did this project towards the end of the year and our school year lasts longer than others so we lost our pen pals a few weeks in. I'd also like to have the option to approve posts before students can submit them to their pen pal chat. Most students wanted to be able to communicate properly with their pen pals, but some used text speak and bare minimum answers, It would have been nice to have been able to send it back to them for corrections before it got posted.

Pen Pal Schools offers fantastic opportunities for connecting students to content areas and to other classrooms! Being able to sign up for lessons that fit my time schedule and my curricular goals makes the platform easy and flexible to use. The variety of lesson topics are engaging for students. The responses from other pen pals around the world allows for a better understanding of the world.

It helps to connect with various people across the globe

I really like PenPalschools platform and I consider it to be a good modern digital tool that is easy to use both at school and at home and from any device. Both teachers and parents do appreciate that it is a safe Internet environment where young people can practice their digital skills, get some fun, chat with their peers from various countries. Another key point is that students can learn to gain knowledge on their own and share it with classmates or parents. In addition, students develop their critical thinking, learn to respect diversity and their own values and culture. They can use knowledge and skills in practice. What is more, it has the variety of topics creates more possibilities.