BOSTON, July 15 /PRNewswire/ --

- ePals to provide Kenyan classrooms with the largest social network for meaningful learning

The Kenyan Ministry of Education will provide the opportunity for their students and educators to safely connect with schools around the world through ePals (http://www.epals.com), the largest and fastest growing global network for meaningful learning. Leveraging the safe, protected and collaborative learning and e-mentoring tools available through ePals, Kenyan students and educators can connect with classrooms in 200 countries and territories, conducting cross-cultural exchanges, language learning practice, and project-based collaboration to build the 21st century skills necessary to succeed in a global economy.

"We've watched the impact some of our schools are having using ePals and feel it is critical we empower all our educators and students to collaborate with peers around the world," said Barnabas Sang, Head of ICT for the Kenyan Ministry of Education. "ePals offers a large and diverse online learning community, a safe environment and a set of collaborative learning activities and projects that are grounded in best practices for building 21st century skills. This enables our classrooms to make meaningful learning connections with other schools worldwide."

Through thousands of ePals exchanges in Africa and ongoing pilots in Nakuru, Kenya, the company's continued efforts provide African students and educators with the ability to create free cross-cultural pen pal and project-based collaborative programs in a safe, protected context using ePals.com and its rich set of leading school communication tools. ePals also has partnered with National Geographic to bring rich digital content to the ePals site, providing in-depth projects and enhancing global perspective. In addition, ePals' safe learning community, connectivity tools and digital literacy curricula give educators the opportunity to help their students' build 21st century digital literacy and learning skills. The company also recently partnered with Intel to offer access to its safe and connected Global Learning Community to users of the Intel-powered classmate PC worldwide, including schools throughout Africa.

"The Kenyan Ministry of Education is dedicated to preparing their students to become global citizens, and ePals will enable that collaborative connection to help Kenyan schools embrace those learning opportunities," said Tim DiScipio, Co-Founder of ePals. "ePals provides educators worldwide the opportunity to bring safe social learning networks into the classroom and begin collaborative project sharing that enables 21st century learning regardless of geography, cultural background or economic status. This helps students become important contributors to the global experience, and ultimately, benefit the global workplace."

To support educators in transforming learning, ePals is providing professional development opportunities to educators interested in incorporating social networking tools for meaningful project-based learning. Barnabas Sang will be speaking during a special ePals pre-conference event during Alan November's Building Learning Communities 2008 Conference hosted by ePals. The one-day event, held today in Boston, Mass., also will feature ePals executives, educators and instructional technology directors. Speakers will address language learning, digital literacy, cross-cultural pen pal projects, district-wide implementation, how to post podcasts on blogs, and how to connect families with teachers through blogs to help support learning outside of the classroom. For more information about the ePals Globally-Connected Classroom Conference, visit http://www.epals.com/conference.

For more information about ePals and activities within the global community, please visit http://www.epalscorp.com.

About ePals, Inc.

Founded in 1996 and merged with In2Books in 2006, ePals offers K-12 students and teachers around the world a safe environment for building and exchanging knowledge based on protected connectivity tools, evidence-based curricula and authentic, collaborative learning experiences. The ePals Global Learning Community(TM) (http://www.epals.com) is the largest online community of K-12 learners, enabling half a million educators across 200 countries and territories to safely connect, exchange ideas, and work together. The company's mission is to support lifelong learning through collaborative experiences that empower and inspire. ePals is especially committed to enabling academically rigorous educational opportunities in economically disadvantaged environments worldwide through the ePals Foundation -- provider of In2Books, the company's flagship literacy e-mentoring program.

Web site: http://www.epals.com http://www.epalscorp.com http://www.epals.com/conference

Rebecca Kilduff of ePals, Inc., +1-703-885-3400, rkilduff@corp.epals.com; or Sandy Fash of C. Blohm & Associates, Inc., +1-608-839-9800, sandy@cblohm.com, for ePals, Inc.