EDCI 337: Evaluating an Interactive Multimedia Learning Web Application

App Overview – PenPal Schools

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PenPal Schools is a website and Multimedia application that is used by thousands of educators in over 150 countries (PenPal Schools, 2020). It is a tool that enables creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and discussion through global-citizenship centred project-based learning (PenPal Schools, 2020). It allows students (8 and older) to connect with other similar aged learners from different countries and cultures through “thoughtfully designed, collaborative projects” on a variety of subjects including Literacy, Social Studies, English/Language Arts, Science, Math, Music, Art, Spanish, Environmentalism, Social Justice, Current Events, Cultures, Civilizations, Virtual Reality and much more (Wilson, 2018; PenPal Schools, 2020). In 2015, President Barack Obama said PenPal Schools was one of the world’s leading social enterprises (Wilson, 2018)!  The program also received a “Top Pick for Learning” award in 2018 from Common Sense Education (PenPal Schools, 2020). 

How It Works

Learners participate in “self-guided, differentiated and mixed media” lessons based on the topic of their or their teacher’s choosing which are “fun and dynamic” and motivate students to stay engaged (Wilson, 2018). Students are tasked with reading and analyzing non-fiction texts, watching videos, sharing ideas to an audience of peers, collaborating using technology, and building empathy, curiosity, and respect (PenPal Schools, 2020). This is motivating for students as there is an obvious and relevant meaning to all of the lessons on PenPal Schools: being able to connect with new people in different places and hear about their experiences/worldview is key to becoming an educated global and digital citizen. I really love the global citizenship emphasis of this web app. The lessons present opportunities for learning and practicing essential skills within the areas of reading, writing, digital citizenship, and social-emotional skills while aligning with “Common Core, TEKS and IB international standards” (PenPal Schools, 2020). While these are American standards, the personalizable nature of the BC Curriculum allows for many connections between the curriculum and the website content to be made.

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Steps To Create A PenPal Schools Classroom (PenPal Schools, 2020)

1. The teacher creates the online classroom on the PenPal Schools website.
2. Students are invited through a unique classroom code.
3. Students go to PenPal Schools website through that code to create a profile. 
4. Students choose (or are guided by their teacher in choosing) a project topic and style. Styles include research, exploring careers, service projects, and connecting with community groups and businesses.
5. After choosing their project topic, students collaborate with other penpals from around the world on module lessons that include a discussion question, a video, and informative text (all offered at beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels for different learners). They get to share ideas with a global audience. Students include evidence from lessons and from personal experience. There is always a “great answer” shown as an example so students know what an effective discussion post looks like.
6. Next, students can read and respond to their penpals (all posts are in English unless the teacher sets a different language for the class). Students can provide feedback for other comments they like by giving badges such as “awesome answer,” “funny,” “inspiring,” “personal,” and many more. This gives them an opportunity to reflect on their own writing and practice digital citizenship skills like reviewing and reading opinions that may be different than their own. Answers with the most positive reviews rise to the top of the discussion board so more people will see them (motivating).
7. There is also an option to create an “original project” that uses videos, visuals, and/or animations charts. Students can share these projects with peers around the world in Penpal Project Showcases. 
8. Teachers can preview lessons from a student perspective to vet them, reset student passwords, monitor student progress, and provide private feedback. Reading, writing digital citizenship, social/emotional skills and more can be assessed on the website itself.

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The App’s Connection to the Principles of Multimedia Learning (Mayer, 2005, p. 8-9)

• Collaboration principle: People can learn better with collaborative online learning activities
  • Using PenPal Schools, students collaborate and share their own ideas with their peers across the world.
• Modality principle: People learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics and printed text
  • The use of videos in the PenPal Schools program helps students learn from graphics and narration.
• Segmenting principle:  People learn better when a multimedia message is presented in learner-paced segments rather than as a continuous unit
  • The lessons in PenPal Schools are learner-paced and self-guided as they are project-based.
• Personalization principle: People learn better when the words of a multimedia presentation are in conversational style rather than formal style
  • Students discuss important topics in a conversational and anecdotal style; this helps anchor their learning to authentic experiences.
• Guided discovery principle: People learn better when guidance is incorporated into discovery-based multimedia environments
  • Teachers can guide their students towards a project but then allow them to discover ideas within that topic.
• Worked examples principle: People learn better when they receive worked examples in initial skill learning
  • Each discussion question is accompanied by an example of “excellent student work” to guide the learners. 
• Self-explanation principle: People learn better when they are encouraged to generate self-explanations during learning
  • Students relate the topics to their own experiences while summarizing the topics in their own way.
• Feedback principle: People learn better from multimedia lessons when they receive explanative feedback on their performance
  • Teachers are able to give feedback to their learners on each part of their project. Additionally, peers can provide each other with feedback.
• Coherence principle: People learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included
  • Depending on the topic that a learner is guided to or chooses, any extraneous information will not be present. PenPal Schools lets them focus on the topic at hand.

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Evaluation, Safety, and Cost

Click here to see my own annotated evaluation of PenPal Schools based on the University of Western Ontario Evaluation Rubric for an eLearning tool (Anstey & Watson, 2018). Serious concerns for PenPal Schools that are elaborated on in my rubric include “mobile access,” “mobile and desktop functionality differences,” and “offline access.”

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PenPal Schools requires only the student’s first name and last initial and they must be invited by a teacher to join. No email address is needed and the location is never shared (other than the student’s country). The PenPal Schools team moderates every post sent in the community and parents can create an account to monitor all messages as well as the teacher. There are no private/direct messages and students can only see posts from peers within 2 years of their age. If personal or inappropriate information is shared, it is usually flagged by other students within minutes and then the teacher and PenPal Schools team can take it down. In addition to these safety measures, teachers are provided with the “21st Century Toolkit” lessons/training on “protecting personal information, cyberbullying, empathy and international mindedness, healthy discussion habits, safe searching skills, digital reputation management and more” to teach their students how to contribute to the community forum respectfully (PenPal Schools, 2020). 

Here is an infographic from PenPal Schools that explains their emphasis on safety. Despite these rigorous safety measures, the website is hosted in America so I do not know if/how much that changes the sharing rules and policies.

After reading a rundown on FIPPA from the University of Western Ontario, I believe PenPal Schools is FIPPA compliant (University of Western Ontario, 2006). However, if I were wanting to use this tool in my own classroom with real learners, I would definitely go to my admin or district tech coordinators as recommended by SD 61 District Vice-Principal Jon Hamlin and SD 79 District Instructional Technology Coordinator Lisa Read, for peace of mind in regards to FIPPA compliance and informed consent as I am not an expert in any legal matter (McCue, 2020a&b, June 10). 

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Finally, the cost. Any educator can join PenPal Schools for free and upon joining they receive some classroom credits which can be used to enroll their class in a topic (eg/ social justice, math, art). If you refer another teacher to PenPal Schools, you can receive more credits. In order to have unlimited access to the plethora of PenPal Schools topics, “schools can purchase annual site licenses to provide their teachers with unlimited access from $2900-$4900 per year depending on the size of the school, with discounts available for multi-year or multi-school licenses” (PenPal Schools, 2020). For lower-income communities or schools with greater needs, scholarships are available from the company upon successful application. 

References

Anstey, L. M. & Watson, G. P.L. Rubric for eLearning Tool Evaluation copyright 2018 Centre for Teaching and Learning, Western University http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Mayer, R. E. (2005). Introduction to Multimedia Learning. In R. E. Mayer (Author), The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning (p. 8-9). New York, NY: University of Cambridge.

McCue, R. (2020a, June 10). Jon Hamlin SD 61: Evaluating Educational Technologies [Mp3]. https://soundcloud.com/rich-mccue/edci-337-jon-hamlin-sd-61-interview-v2

McCue, R. (2020b, June 10). Lisa Read SD 79: Evaluating Educational Technologies [Mp3]. https://soundcloud.com/rich-mccue/interview-with-lisa-read-district-instructional-technology-coordinator-sd-79

PenPal Schools. 2020. A Global Project Based Learning Community. (n.d.). Retrieved June 13, 2020, from https://www.penpalschools.com/index.html

Troyen, J. 2020. How much does PenPal Schools cost? Retrieved from https://support.penpalschools.com/en/articles/2143008-how-much-does-penpal-schools-cost

University of Western Ontario. (June 2006). FIPPA Basics, Reviewed November 2018. https://www.uwo.ca/univsec/privacy/fippa_basics.html

Wilson, L. (2018, May 03). Everything You Need To Know To Get Started With PenPal Schools. Retrieved June 13, 2020, from https://hundred.org/en/articles/everything-you-need-to-know-to-get-started-with-penpal-schools