How To... Send Safe and Snazzy E-mail
By Linda Lindroth

For Reproducible click here. PDF 35KB

"Here's an Abraham Lincoln emoticon, just in time for Presidents' Day. Why not invite your students to come up with emoticons that represent other presidents?

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, it seems like a great time to examine ways to integrate e-mail into the curriculum. Students love to write to each other, and will be more motivated about all writing in the content areas if it's going to an authentic audience. E-mail lets us easily accomplish this goal.

Getting ready
Setting up your students for e-mail use will be based on your state and district guidelines and should be done with the help of your technology resource facilitator. The general guidelines will involve Internet safety rules and net etiquette. A good source for these guidelines can be found at WOW Online: Basic Net 101. The e-mail tutorial even has links to instructions for setting up e-mail in various browsers. www.wowusa.com/Internet101 Another source for e-mail tutorials is www.howstuffworks.com/email.htm

You'll also need resources for finding e-mail addresses, so students have somebody to write to. A good place to start is www.epals.com On this website you'll find other classrooms using e-mail, well-developed collaborative projects that integrate into curriculum, communication tools and SchoolMail. For more on SchoolMail, call 888-770-3333.

The search for e-mail addresses will be conducted by you, particularly in the primary grades. Any student access to these services should be supervised. This is a good time to reinforce online safety and etiquette.

Personalized e-mail
Once your students have basic e-mail skills, it's time to add pizzazz to their communications. Students can personalize their e-mails with the use of emoticons, acronyms and a signature that says something about their personalities or interests.

Make a classroom chart of these and other emoticons. To print the emoticon chart, click here. PDF 35KB

Emoticons. No, they're not hieroglyphics, but they are a modern-day version of graphical expression. Emoticons are keyboard graphics that depict feelings in an e-mail. They're also known as smileys: :-) Help students enhance their writing with feelings using the wide range of emoticons available on the Internet. Two of my favorite emoticon collections are Smiley Central (6000+ color graphics) at www.smileycentral.com/ and http://messenger.yahoo.com/ You can print the chart of emoticons from Yahoo! and let students add them to their messages. It's a great way to motivate students to read a chart. I even had my students use tables in Microsoft Word to create our own class chart of emoticons to post by our computers.

Take advantage of the holidays and encourage students to use emoticons on their Valentines. I use them in place of stickers for quick assessment of students' work. Try bringing in the Sunday comics and having students identify feelings using emoticons.

Acronyms. Our lives are full of them. Just look at sports: NBA, NFL, ABL or TV (much easier to spell than television!) with NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS. Your students can explore acronyms by searching their reading, the newspaper and magazines for popular initials. For e-mail acronyms, visit www.netmanners.com/email_acronyms.html which features a chart to get you started. Challenge your students to figure them out. I give them one and see if they can figure out the related ones. IMO = in my opinion, IMHO = ?; {g} = grin, {bg} = ?

Signatures. The signature is a personalized "address label" for the end of your message. It should be 4-8 lines and can include contact information, short quotes, a website address or a small graphic. Guide your students in creating their personal signature lines. A safety tip for all of us – create a basic signature without address and telephone for e-mail going to the public. I have two – one with just my name and title, and one that has complete contact information for e-mail where I know the person(s) to whom I am sending. Note: Student e-mail should never include last name or personal address.

E-mail forums
An e-mail forum is a safe way to allow students to communicate with teachers, each other and experts throughout the world about topics related to curriculum. The forum promotes writing and allows students to explore different viewpoints and cultures. There's a moderator to guide the discussion.

Most education forums are closed – new participants must be invited or request access. In my school district, our forum allows guests who have been invited by a teacher or who have registered for access to a specific forum. Forum projects such as a fifth grade study of U. S. regions allow students to initiate e-mail discussions with students throughout the United States. To find out more or to participate in this forum, visit groups.yahoo.com Another way of connecting with other classrooms across the globe is with ePals Classroom Exchange (www.epals.com), which posts teacher-designed cross-cultural projects.

Not only will e-mail provide an authentic audience for student projects, but it can boost student communication and writing skills. A great hotlist for fun web projects is E-mail in the Classroom at www.hardin.k12.ky.us/res_techn/TEC/integrate/emailnclass.htm So, boot up your e-mail program and connect to the real world!

For Reproducible click here. PDF 35KB

Linda K. Lindroth is Technology Editor and Web Coordinator for Teaching K-8. She is also a Technology Resource Teacher in a K-5 computer lab in Lexington, KY.

February, 2004. Volume 34, Number 5.