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Keypals Students of the 21st century are becoming more and more technology savvy. Technology has changed literacy today, and in essence changed the purpose of writing for our students (Hobbs, 2011). Keypals, digital pen pals, or ePals is the technology enhanced writing tool that allows users to communicate all over the world in asynchronous time. Educators, K-12, are capitalizing on this innovative communication tool.

There are two ways that teachers may wish to incorporate keypals into their instruction. The first way is through setting up students with individual e-mail accounts. Many schools provide their students with an e-mail service, however, there are also other free e-mail providers, such as gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc. The disadvantage of this method is that that have a difficult time monitoring and keeping record of their students e-mail exchanges (Anderson, Grant, & Speck, 2008).

The second method to incorporate keypals into a classroom setting is through a program called ePals. ePals is a free e-mail monitoring system. Teachers can go to ePals.com to set up students with individual accounts. This program allows teachers to monitor ingoing and outgoing emailing correspondences between students (Anderson, Grant, & Speck, 2008).

Both of these keypal methods can address several instructional purposes. To accommodate students of diverse backgrounds, teachers are striving to create a culturally responsive classroom by using technology tools such as keypals (Au, 2011). Not only does keypals allow students to become more aware of their own culture, it also provides opportunities for students to learn about cultures and traditions worldwide (Anderson, Grant, & Speck, 2008).

Technology tools such as this can be extremely motivating to all learners, especially English Language Learners (ELLs). Keypal offers students an authentic global audience, in which they are able to interact with one another. This can be useful and help ELL students gain confidence in conversing with others as they build their oral and academic language skills.

Before incorporating this technology into the classroom, teachers must consider having open conversations about the acceptable use policy that the school or district may have in place (Burniske, 2008). In this discussion, educators should give the guidelines for communicating with one another and proper “netiquette” procedures when using an e-mail exchange program.