Email with your students? Take it easy, step-by-step

by Travelin' Librarian at flickr

Here's a challenging assignment: Chris Mooney came into the teacher room asking for ideas and guidance around setting up email accounts for all her students. Yes, that can be a huge and daunting job, especially if you try to set up all the accounts in one go. [I have tried that, and Never Again is my motto.]

So here are some ideas that came up while Chris and i were talking about it:

Single group email account
1) You could start, not with individual email accounts, but rather with a single account for the whole class. For example eslmerrilands [at] gmail.com, or something like that. [if it's available]

Do a lot of the learning as a group, before people venture out on their own.

..because the literacies involved are enormous at this point. What does each part of the screen represent? What are all the language terms about? - compose, inbox, reply [sign up vs sign in!] (What is the usual social context and how does the technology 'position' the learner etc..?)

First off, i would always use the data projector to show how the whole thing works, if possible.

After demonstrating the basics, hand the (wireless) keyboard over to students and invite them to operate the controls. You could give the (wireless) mouse to a different student, so that the mouse person and the keyboard person have to talk about controlling the screen.