NYC schools to deploy free eMail, collaboration tools from ePals

By Meris Stansbury, Associate Editor, eSchoolNews

In what could be a huge sign of change in how students learn, New York City Public Schools has begun implementation of communication and collaboration software from ePals and Microsoft—education technology tools that not only will connect students to other classrooms across the world but also will connect teachers to parents, regardless of the language they speak.

The New York City Department of Education (DOE)—the largest system of public schools in the United States, serving about 1.1 million students in more than 1,600 schools—chose ePals in a competitive-bidding process. The DOE was looking for a cost-effective, secure, and private space where students easily could communicate and collaborate as part of their learning.

ePals won the bid, providing the DOE with free access to its SchoolMail product—secure eMail software that is hosted on the web and integrates technologies from Microsoft’s Live@edu, so the district does not need to maintain its own software, hardware, or server-side technology for the deployment.

...City students also will be able to communicate with classrooms across the world as part of ePals’ global community, which reaches 600,000 educators who teach 25 million students worldwide. (Read more about ePals teacher-led pen pal projects here.)

To read the rest of the article, go to: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/07/14/nyc-schools-to-deploy-free-em...