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!
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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