If you’re already participating in the In2Books literacy eMentoring program, we’d like to invite you to participate in our digital pilot!

Here’s how you can participate:

Who:   Classrooms participating in In2Books during the 2011-2012 class year

What:   Help us test a digital, magazine-based unit in the In2Books program

In order to increase the reading selection of the In2Books program, we’re piloting a new digital version using award-winning magazines from Carus Publishing, the venerable home of Cobblestone, Odyssey, Ask and AppleSeeds magazines.  For our digital pilot, pen pals will be able to download a digital version of the AppleSeeds magazine, and students will have access to both print and digital versions. No more waiting around for books!

When: NOW — May/June 2012!

Let us know as soon as you’ve finished your current unit and want to begin the digital unit!

How: Email us at i2bmailsupport @ epals.com

When you email us let us know that you would like to participate in the pilot.  Your response registers your classroom for a free issue of AppleSeeds Magazine.

Here’s how it works:

• Participating classrooms and their penpals will receive a digital version of AppleSeeds Magazine, The Perfect Storm edition. (First 30 classrooms that sign up will get physical copies for their participating students as well.)  AppleSeeds magazine, The Perfect Storm edition is packed with over a dozen informational weather-related, fun experiments, poems, and activities! All the articles within this magazine are available 24/7. 

• Students can read articles from the magazine online and correspond with their pen pals about them, just as you’ve done with books all year!  Pen pals have access to the magazine online so they can read along and share with students. 

We need your feedback and your help in defining our new product.  We’re hoping you’re as excited as we are … and will help us to make the In2Books program better than ever. Email us now at i2bmailsupport @ epals.com and let us know that you would like to participate in the pilot. 

Thanks for your help!

The In2Books Team

As the students return to school we are excited to celebrate the start of 2012 with National Mentoring Month.  Mentors play an important role in shaping the lives of our next generation and we are proud to pay tribute to the work you do throughout the year for your In2Books student.  We appreciate your commitment and your willingness to share your hearts and your minds.  Our history tells us that students and teachers value the experience.  For additional information about National Mentoring Month, visit SERVE.gov/MENTOR.

One new In2Books classroom is not far from our offices in Northern Virginia, and it was a great pleasure for one of the In2Books team to deliver books to them only a day before they began their holiday break. What a joy to know that they would spend some of their break reading a new book!

We wish every In2Books participant a similar feeling of joy as they celebrate the holidays and look forward to the return of students to their classes and the next letters we exchange with them.

I was fortunate today to visit an In2Books classroom in Savannah and see the program in action and talk with the teacher and some of her students. A few of the students were typing their letters back to their eMentors. They already had hand-written their letters and their teacher had read the letters and helped the students improve them, so all they had left to do was type it into the computer and format it. 

As eMentors, we’re always eager to get our next letter from our student, but we need to appreciate that the process can take a while in classrooms. 

We start the month of November with more than 1,700 matched pen pals and we continue to match students each week.  New classrooms are coming into the program (12 more classrooms registered this week alone!) and we are still receiving inquiries about the program from teachers across the country.  

We appreciate the support and dedication from all our pen pals - those matched and those still waiting to be matched. We will continue to share updates on the matching process. Please feel free to submit questions via the form at http://in2books.epals.com/support/feedback.aspx

As of today we have matched 61 classrooms for the 2011-2012 school year (that’s approximately 1,400 pen pals). Things are moving more slowly than anticipated as teachers begin the program in their classrooms.  

We apologize for the delay to those who have completed the initial steps and are waiting to hear about being matched.  We will continue to share updates each week on the matching process.  Please feel free to submit questions via the form at http://in2books.epals.com/support/feedback.aspx

eMentors: we are getting lots of questions about when you will be matched with a student. Do not lose faith. We make a match only when each class has completed some preliminary steps to get set up for the school year. About half of the classes have hit that point and been matched. We anticipate matching all of the eMentors within the next month and will keep posting updates.

The ComputED Gazette has selected In2Books as one of the winners in the 16th Annual Education Software Review Awards (EDDIEs). The awards target innovative and content-rich programs and websites that augment the classroom curriculum and improve teacher productivity, providing parents and teachers with the technology to foster educational excellence. Some selection criteria are academic content, potential for broad classroom use, technical merit, subject approach and management system. Winners are selected from titles submitted by publishers around the world.