Epals

I am taking the plunge and using http://www.epals.com/

I started using email exhanges with a Canadian teacher and his class about 15 years ago when I had to take home text files of my pupils' emails and send them from there. I still like using email interchange although I have fought shy of using epals because it does not integrate well with our email system. You have to use theirs. They have a premium rate system which costs an arm and a leg (and I have a budget of 0) but I have started this year to experiment with using their system with my year 7 class. I have set up 27 accounts (the maximum number of free accounts is 35) and we will see how it goes.

I have found email exchanges with pupils overseas to be a "consciousness-raising" experience for pupils and it also raises enthusiasm and excitement. They find out a lot about the globalisation of culture (the Japanese pupils watching "The Simpsons") as well as finding about the many differences in culture. (The school I have linked up with is a strongly Catholic school in America)

I have used http://www.iecc.org but on the whole I had a lot of frustration with schools not following up so pupils spend a lot of time writing emails and then get no replies.

Does anyone else who has used email exchange have any comments?