Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Did you Know About Gmail +1?

A lot of the sites I feature require a log in and or registering with an email.  I know that this can be a dangerous area for many school districts due to the legal issues associated with school-sponsored emails, cyberbullying, etc.  So today I wanted to share one of the solutions to this problem that I use.
If you want your students to sign up for a Web 2.0 site such as Animoto, Prezi, Toon Doo, etc, you can sign up for a free Gmail account.  If you sign up for a Gmail account, say penguinsslide@gmail.com [NOT ACTUAL EMAIL!...At least, not an email where you can contact me], you automatically get access to a plus-one feature.  This means that you can use your Gmail account as many different email accounts, simply by adding "+1".  For example: penguinsslide+1@gmail.com is seen as a different email from penguinsslide+2@gmail.com.

You could assign a different +number to each student in your class so they could each have "their own" email!

The best part about all this is that while each email with a different +number is seen as individual, all emails sent to that address get sent to the main email: penguinsslide@gmail.com.  You, being the only one with the password to the account, are the only one able to check the email.  While this makes for quite a few emails to check for account activation, it ensures that your students are not getting any inappropriate email.

Try it out and leave me a comment to let me know what you think!  If you have any questions, just email me!

1 comment:

  1. Ok let me first start out by saying that Google is genius. This makes so many different options more accessible now for schools who can't afford to have their students on e-mails. My head is spinning with possibilities. I'm just glad we were able to switch to Google for Education, but if not this would totally be an ideal solution!

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