Any Suggestions for Kid Friendly & Safe Free Email Options for the Classroom?

Ok, I know there are dozens and dozens if not HUNDREDS of email providers out there that bill their email as "safe and kid friendly" or "safe for school."

I am looking for an option for an email service that is very simple, doesn't ask for an email to sign up, and is web based and doesn't have to be downloaded and installed.

Here is the situation. I teach 6th Grade Technology Integration. I have over 150 students every semester. We use many different Web 2.0 Resources within our classroom curriculum, however, some ask for students to sign up.

Lately, we have been using Comic Master, ToonDoo, & XtraNormal to create Anti-Cyberbulying Comics, Graphic Novels, and Animations. Each of these sites ask the students to sign up to use them and want email addresses. Then, once you are signed up, you need to confirm your email by checking it and clicking an activation link (Comic Master doesn't ask for Confirmation, but Xtranormal does after your first day and will not let you log in).

I cannot share a basic email for all of them to use since these sites will not allow you to create multiple accounts with one email. Most of the large email providers at my school are blocked, which I understand and support.

My Tech Coordinator has no problem with us using a "Kid Friendly, Free, & Safe Email Service" so I am trying to find some options. Anything suggestions would be great. I have found a few doing some research, but ALL of them ask for a "parent" email or user email just to sign up, many of my students don't have email.

We have Google Apps, but we don't have the email portion activated cause we dont want to open up and connect our server to those of Google (I guess your servers have to be connected to googles when you use their email service in Google Apps).

Thanks so much!

David Dean

http://classoftech.blogspot.com/

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Permalink Reply by Erica Zaremba on March 23, 2011 at 6:41pm

Try epals if you haven't thought of it already. You seem to be more technological advanced than myself, but I know when I tried it with my grade 4 students it was good, but they couldn't log into the account that I created. Being that I didn't know a lot about the site I eventually tossed the idea.

Hope that helps.

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Permalink Reply by David Dean on March 23, 2011 at 6:49pm

Thanks for the response. Epals looks like one of the better options for a semester long email account. Most of the sites I have looked at needed an email just to start up. Epals lets the teacher set it all up.

One of the coolest options for a temporary email address that I found was http://10minutemail.com

This site generates you a temporary email address for only 10 minutes. You have the option to extend the email for another 10 minute segment as needed. Then, right on the site, you can check the emails you get. After your time is up, the email address is terminated.

This is exactly what we need for now. A temporary email address the students can sign up for a site with, activate their registration, and that's it. They only need the email address if they forget their username and/or password, and we use the same user names and passwords our school assigned us. So our kids, in theory, shouldn't forget them.

They can always go back and change their email to a real email at home if they want. This is the best fix for what I need now, and I am going to look at epals for next year.

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Permalink Reply by Caroline Cerveny on March 23, 2011 at 8:21pm

David, You may want to look at ePals which provides free email accounts for students. In addition, you have the capability of doing projects with students in other countries.