Get Free Student Email Accounts with Gaggle
February 26, 2008
Email was supposed to make our lives easier. It was supposed to open up new opportunities for learning, to communicate with students, even an easier way to assign and turn in homework. If only your school didn’t have that strict no-email policy.
If you want to add email to your teaching arsenal, talk to your administrators about Gaggle. Gaggle is a free email program tailored for teachers and students, and is perfect for schools who don’t want to spend big bucks to add server space, administer accounts, deal with spam and cyber bullying, and all the other headaches that come with student email.
You can monitor all messages and keep an eye out for inappropriate messages, cyber bullying and the like. You can also give Gaggle a list of blocked words, so if your students have a penchant for saying “doo-doo head,” you can block those messages. You can also revoke email privileges for students who abuse the system. Best of all, you can control all incoming messages, so you don’t have to worry about angry calls from parents because Little Johnny received a great business offer from a Nigerian banker.
Gaggle is ad-supported, but you can upgrade to (that is, pay for) a subscription service that’s ad-free. But it’s not like students haven’t seen commercials, so Gaggle is a good way to get your class online for free. -BILL FERRIS
