G-mail Accounts for Students

I have not tried this myself, yet. I would check the acceptable use policy at your school before putting this into use. The method came from one of the groups I belong to:An additional description of this method comes from Kim Cofino who suggests using this for elementary students.

Gmail for Student Accounts

The problem that many teachers face when having students create user accounts for web applications is that most applications require a valid e-mail address to create the account. There is a solution that I learned from Alice Mercer about harnessing Gmail to create “fake” accounts that applications will recognize as legitimate.

Create a legitimate gmail account at http://mail.google.com/. (e.g. username@gmail.com). Then, you can use that base account to “trick” web applications that require e-mail address to create user accounts. The way it works is that you add a + and a student name/alias after the gmail user name (e.g. username+sara@gmail.com, username+tom@gmail.com, username+chris@gmail.com, etc.)

The web applications will recognize those addresses as real e-mail addresses, but students never see an inbox. They cannot send nor receive e-mail because you haven’t actually created an e-mail account for them; they don’t have a password to sign into Gmail. Any e-mail (i.e. registration confirmations, etc.) that are sent to the username+name@gmail accounts will be delivered to the Gmail inbox that only you can access.

I have used this to register students for blogs, wikis, and other Web 2.0 applications. The one catch is that it does not work when registering students for Google applications, like Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Notebook, etc.

Here are those instructions as steps:

1. Create a legitimate Gmail account at http://mail.google.com/. (e.g. username@gmail.com).
2. Add a + and a student name/alias after the Gmail user name (e.g. username+sara@gmail.com, username+tom@gmail.com, username+chris@gmail.com, etc.)
3. Start registering students for web applications
4. Check the inbox of your Gmail account periodically

Edmodo and Wiggio, Microblogging with Students

These two sites offer opportunities to microblog with students. Edmodo has a place to post a calendar, assignments and files. Wiggio was designed by college students who needed a better way to collaborate. You can send all kinds of e-mails and messages, work on files together, poll the group and keep a group calendar. I may set one of these up for parents this year or use it with the writing project or . . .