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.


For instructions you could create a printed document with only screengrabs of various stages in the process - login, compose, reply etc. (Or ask michael to make this document for you, as it could be useful for many teachers.) Then ask the students to write their own text instructions as you show them on the data projector. This could serve to reinforce their understanding of the experience.

Collaborate with another teacher
2) You could collaborate with another teacher at PRACE (or a different organisation) to start off with some language activities via email: whole class to whole class. And do the reading and writing as a whole group over the data projector.

[ Some example activities? Let me think: comments? ]

by idogcow at flickr

Call for help when signing everyone up
3) Later on, when people are more comfortable with the ideas and processes from this groupwork, you might consider introducing individual email accounts. But again, don't go it alone. Signing up a whole class for new email addresses is one of those things that can quickly become a teacher nightmare.

You could invite michael chalk along to assist. You could bring in a volunteer or 2 for the day. Ideally you'd have 4-6 students per teacher/volunteer.

4) Then you could work with the same teacher you were collaborating with before, and start some individual email activities. [We'll hunt down some existing resources at this point - teachers all around the world have been doing this for years now, especially electronic pen-pal projects.]

What do you think?

Have you tried this before, and how did you go about it?