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Teens
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Cool Stuff
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Pen Pals
A Girl's World Free Penpal Spectacular - Here's the good news: this site lets you safely exchange e-mail with girls aged 7 to 17 from around the world. Here's the bad news, guys: the site is for girls only! (Take the Study Buddy link for a co-ed pen pal exchange.) This system takes your e-mail and remails it, giving you a member number instead. Your pen friend writes back to your box number, the computer at A Girl's World matches your box number with your real e-mail address, and--poof!--your e-mail arrives at your regular mailbox. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is. Read some of these girls' descriptions: they sound really interesting and fun to get to know.
ePals Classroom Exchange - Connecting "over 2.5 million students and teachers through 33,133 profiles," ePals includes more than 65,000 member classrooms in 182 countries. Surely, you can findw someone to write to who will write back! First, you need to register, and kids can do that directly or through a teacher or a parent. Either way, be sure to read and understand the privacy policies first. Parents registering their children have a number of interesting options. Since participants get their own mail account at epals.com, parents can choose to monitor the child's mail before passing it on to the child's mailbox. Classrooms (or home schools) create a "profile" which can include a general map of its rough location, ages and gender of the class, hobbies, languages, and other special interests. The profiles are searchable, even if you have not become a member yet. Epals offers both monitored and unmonitored chat rooms, and children should be warned not to divulge personal information like their addresses and phone numbers. Even though everyone on the service has gone through the registration process, there is no guarantee that anyone is actually who he says he is.
Kidlink Network - You know the world's got some big problems: pollution, hunger, poverty. Why not talk to other kids and see if you can help solve some of them? Make new friends, and have some fun with kids from 129 different countries on the KIDCAFE discussions. Take a look at the KIDLINK mailing list page, and start e-mailing new friends. Show this to your teacher and parents, too. They'll find lots of good information about how to share a project with a class in another country. Many of the discussions are held in languages other than English, too!
Penpal Box - Part of Net-mom's favorite site, Kids' Space, the Penpal Box offers kids aged 6 to 16 the opportunity to have an e-mail friend. Actually, there is more than one box: look through the box for six and under, the box for ages seven and eight, the one for nine and ten, and so on. There's also a box for classes that want to exchange e-mail. Remember to read the FAQ for safety tips, and remember not to give your home address to anyone.
Study Buddy: Your School Survival Connection - A wonderful collection of tips on everything from memorizing lines in a play to dealing with procrastination is in store for you at this site, plus lots of study "survival" information and a way to get a "study buddy" through a safe pen pal remailer system. It doesn't divulge your real e-mail address, so it's safe as long as you don't disclose it yourself to your pen pal. Ages 6-12, 13-17, whole classrooms, and teacher-to-teacher exchanges are encouraged.
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