B-Dag

Schools around the country have been taking advantage of new technology this year. Cloud-hosting and online communications offer students and teachers new ways to collaborate in an educational sphere. ePals, Inc. is working to establish itself as a leader in online educational communities, especially with the recent launch of its K-12 Solutions Partner Program.The program supports ePals’ already popular LearningSpace and SchoolMail applications. LearningSpace is a controlled online environment complete with social media and digital storage areas. Users are assigned roles (such as teacher and student), and teachers can moderate the information students are posting before it goes out over the web. LearningSpace is aimed at school districts seeking more communication between different sites, although smaller groups can be created within individual schools and classes. With blogging, wikis, content tagging, RSS, and web forums at their disposal, students learn to work with technology and integrate it into their other subjects. Users can also connect with other students and teachers in the more than 200 countries that use LearningSpace.The new Partner Program will allow companies aimed at the K-12 market to reach prospective customers, and inform parents and teachers about the opportunities available. Computer Generated Solutions (CGS), which was Microsoft’s 2010 Education Partner of the Year, will be the first partner. CGS is known for its Unlimited Mailbox application, which offers e-mail users more storage space for archiving old messages and documents.