Instructify

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

This utility means you’re never more than two clicks away from peace of mind. If you’re a Windows user, Backup to Email sends a backup copy of important files to your email address. The best part? Rather than logging on to your email, filling out your address, adding an attachment, then giving up because of the hassle and swearing you’ll do a full-scale backup “over the weekend,” Backup to Email takes about three seconds, and works for any file type. It splits large files so your inbox won’t be overwhelmed by one behemoth attachment.

Remember: a failure to plan is a plan for failure. And a hard drive failure can drive you to smack your head against a hard surface. This is a fast solution that beats burning a bunch of fragile CDs, and is infinitely better than “I’ll back up my files tomorrow.” –BILL FERRIS

Backup to Email

Everybody hates email forwards. If you work at a school, every day you get bombarded with schmaltz like, “Little Joey will get money for his new lung if you just keep forwarding this email!” And the ever-popular, “Respond to this exciting investment opportunity!” Or spam like, “Whoever took all the dry-erase markers from the supply closet, please return them or face disciplinary action.” Worst of all, you can’t even read the content half the time because of those stupid formatting marks (>>) getting in the way.

That said, there are times when you might have useful information to forward to others. Do your e-pen-pal a favor and take out all the formatting with emailSTRIPPER. It’s a freeware program, which is good since it only does one thing. It does that thing well, though, and your emails will definitely be easier to read. Also, emailSTRIPPER fights formatting in the flyweight division, weighing in at a measly 171 KB–smaller than a lot of the emails you’ll be cleaning up.

All in all, emailSTRIPPER is a classy program, and you won’t have to wonder where to put the dollar bill. –BILL FERRIS

emailSTRIPPER