Feb
6
Educator Panel Discussion on Using Gaggle Student E-mail
February 6, 2009 | Tagged digital locker, email, gaggle.net, student, TCEA 2009 | Leave a Comment
When I worked as a teacher in the classroom about 3 years ago at a different district before moving to the technology department where I am currently, I kept asking our Technology Department to provide me student email accounts, but was always turned down. Finally, I went out and searched on my own and found Gaggle.net; I immediately used it with my students. My students loved it. Gaggle.net not only provides an email account, but also provides other tools that students found useful, especially the digital locker (no more Flash Drives).
I have always been an advocate for student email accounts; so when I moved to my current district and found out that they also did not provide email accounts I was a little disappointed. However, I went a whole year working in the Technology Department and not one teacher asked me about student email accounts (I think its because it was already set that students were not allowed to have email accounts). However, at the beginning of this year I had a couple of teachers (middle school and high school) ask me about student email accounts. Unfortunately, according to my previous Technology Director, we did not allow student email accounts. So, I asked her where it stated that we could not create and use student email accounts; board policy, etc. She stated “its my policy” and the conversation ended there. So once again, a teacher or in this case a couple of teachers were stuck without student email accounts.
I myself see it as a great tool for students and teachers so that they can communicate and collaborate as long as the teacher monitors the email system; which Gaggle.net makes very simple to do. My question to Instructional Technology Coordinators, Technology Directors, Principals, etc:
- Is having student email accounts really that difficult, horrible, taboo, etc?
- If you have student email accounts setup, what service do you use, Gaggle.net, etc?
- Do you feel that student email accounts can be bypassed by other technologies such as Wikis, Blogs, Ning networks, etc?
