Assistant Professor José Lizarraga developed an enclosed network in collaboration with his graduate students and partners in the Boulder Valley School District. Functioning much like Facebook, the EPIC Friends site connects P-6 learners with each other and with pre-service teachers in the School of Education’s Educational Psychology for Elementary Schools course. This digitized social network is designed to provide an engaging enrichment program that resembles the types of playful yet rigorous activities that are part of our face-to-face, afterschool EPIC Futures program at Sanchez Elementary School in Lafayette.
Young learners and pre-service teachers create profiles that describe them and their experience. Young participants are also able to connect directly with pre-service teachers/mentors using the enclosed network’s chat feature and via live video chat sessions, with parent permission.