How To...Keep the E-mails Coming
By Linda Lindroth

As teachers, we've worked hard during the school year to establish and maintain good communication with our students, their parents and the school's staff. E-mail can help to keep these lines of communication open over the summer break. This month, I'm going to share some of my summer e-mail tips with you.

E-mail addresses
It's a good idea to take the time right now to request and collect an e-mail address for each of your students' parents and the students themselves. Many parents now have e-mail addresses at home, and even more parents will be willing to share their work e-mail address if they know they'll hear from you a few times during the summer months.

You may want to send out a request asking for an e-mail contact in your "End of the School Year" newsletter. I do this with my current students to continue the rapport I've established during the school year. Here are some other guidelines that I use:

• Be sure to let parents and students know how many e-mails they can expect. I suggest you limit the communication to 3-5 e-mails.
• I also let my students' parents know that the e-mails I send them will not contain confidential information about their children. This makes it easier to use office e-mail or a family member's e-mail address.
• Make sure you send a "snail mail" copy of your e-mails to any students or parents who can't provide an e-mail address.

Getting into it
I also provide parents with a list of possible methods for accessing e-mail. More and more schools now have school web portals that offer students and parents their own e-mail accounts. If your school doesn't offer this service, here are some other hints you can pass along to your students and their parents:

• Check with the public library or a local community center to see if they offer e-mail access.
• Gaggle.net – This site offers free teacher-controlled e-mail accounts for students. They also offer an advertisement-free version at $4 per student or $499 per school.
• hbzMail – From Headbone Zone; these filtered, free e-mail accounts for kids offer parent controls for extra security.

Group lists
Once you've compiled your list of e-mail addresses, it's a good idea to create a Distribution Group List in your e-mail program. All e-mail programs will let you set up a group which makes it possible to write one e-mail and send it to multiple addresses. This is a great time-saver and it also insures that each and every student and/or parent gets an e-mail. There are many tutorials available to help you set up your group lists. Here are just a few:

• Visual Tutorials – This site presents clear, concise video tutorials for various e-mail programs, including Outlook, Eudora and Pegasus.
• How E-mail Works – From smtp to pop3, you can learn all about e-mail from HowStuffWorks.

Why send e-mail?
I love e-mail because it allows me to share ideas and activities even when the school calendar isn't year-round! Because the summer break gives me more time to browse the many educational portals and teaching resources, I love being able to share with my students great the new websites I find, even while school isn't in session.

How many times have you come across the perfect web resource after you've finished a theme unit in the classroom? My students feel very special when I e-mail them to suggest an interactive website that ties into a book they read during the school year or a theme or unit that really excited them when they studied the topic in class.

Once you've set up a Distribution Group List, all you'll need to do in order to send a special web resource alert (or anything else) to your entire class is click on your web browser's "Send" button – voila! you've e-mailed your message to the group.

I usually have one or two "can't wait" sites that I share in this manner during the summer. I collect any other relevant websites in an online bookmark or favorites list and then send them along in my monthly e-mail newsletter to my students and/or their parents. This keeps everybody updated on the latest and greatest resources.

Student e-pals
Another advantage of obtaining your students' e-mail addresses is the ability to set up e-pals within your classroom so students can keep in touch with each other over the summer. Of course, students can share their e-mail addresses on their own, but I always get a signed e-pal permission slip from my students' parents before we share e-mail addresses in the classroom. Parents also like to know of safe, reliable e-pal sites. I recommend the following:

• ePals – Designed for the classroom, this web resource has global projects for kids and a parent area.

I hope you'll take advantage of e-mail technology to keep the lines of communication open for yourself, your students and their parents this summer. The speed and convenience of e-mail communication truly make this a small world.

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

Updated April 2008
May 2003, Vol.33, No.8