About Us
What is DigiPals all about?
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We match and connect school classes around the world. Students are then able to communicate with peers in other countries and have the option to collaborate on projects. To ensure the connections are meaningful and appropriate, we match classes together based on the amount of students in each class and their ages.
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Click here to learn about how it wo​rks.
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Designed by Educators
We believe that the best programs for students are designed by people who have roots in the classroom and experience in the education field.
Based on Research
Our approach is grounded in a range of studies by recognized experts.
Focused on Success
We are focused on supporting teachers in building their students’ global competence and improving their language skills.
The DigiPals Story
By Sophie Nissim
(Founder of DigiPals)
Inspired by these realizations as a global citizen and teacher, I set out to develop DigiPals, an innovative way to improve students’ language skills, globalize the classroom and facilitate seamless connections between students worldwide through effective communication and impactful collaborations and projects.
My Personal Experience as a Global Citizen
By traveling to parts of Europe, North America, and Asia, in addition to living and working abroad in London, Florida, and Tel Aviv, I’ve gotten the opportunity to mix and mingle with people of widely different backgrounds.
My experiences opened my eyes and heart in so many ways. By exploring, living and working in such a variety of places, each with their own blend of cultures, I began to learn and understand the people and places that make up our world. I developed strong social skills, improved my communication abilities, and strengthened my intercultural competence. By creating genuine relationships with people around the globe, my empathy, compassion, and appreciation for others grew.
My Personal Experience as a Teacher
While teaching ESL abroad and developing creative ways for my students to grasp the language, I kept feeling that although they learned and understood certain concepts, they were missing something. Besides chatting to me, they weren’t getting the opportunity to practice their skills in a real-life setting. How were they going to become capable, confident English speakers if they weren’t using the language outside of a traditional classroom setting?
I started speaking to adults and asking them how they became competent in their English skills. They all came back to me with the same response: by actually using the language. These opportunities to speak English usually came from taking long trips abroad where English was either the country’s native language or its lingua franca.
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Meet the Founder
Sophie Nissim
Founder/CEO
Sophie is a global citizen, originally from the United Kingdom and holds a Master’s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). She is a passionate ESL teacher who has taught in elementary schools in Tel Aviv and also developed her private teaching practice, working with students from 3 years old up to 16 years old.
She is passionate about giving students meaningful educational experiences, helping students become global citizens and playing a part in promoting kindness in the world.
Mission
We truly believe that once we learn and understand others, we can appreciate the diversity that exists in our world; we can remove judgment and replace it with kindness. One way we can enact such a positive change is through a bottom-up strategy; where we start with students. By connecting them to others around the world, we can build their global competence and create a ripple effect that extends into their futures and beyond.
The importance and benefits of cross-cultural experiences and global collaborations are supported by tons of research that show it increases creativity, effective communication, social tolerance, emotional responses, and many more positive attributes. Further research shows that these qualities can even be transmitted intergenerationally. As well as this, these experiences and attributes will contribute to the all important 21st Century skills; vital to the futures of today’s students in navigating the more diverse, interconnected world that we now live in.
Our mission at DigiPals is to bring real-world relevance and meaningful experiences to classrooms around the world, ultimately preparing students to thrive in the 21st century and beyond while also striving to bring more peace and love into our lives and our world - human harmony!
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