http://gmail.com
We might think that email is about communication. But more than that, email manages identity. It has become common practice now for most applications to use email as part of their signup and login procedures, and to use email to communicate automatically with service users. Email is like the connector and the communicator and your identity all rolled into one. You can also use email to help manage your information about and interaction with these sites.
The basics
Gmail is email. It has great features. It works. Email addresses are critical to most of the applications we want to use online. Gmail can manage multiple accounts easily.
Webbased mail ensures that mail is always available and can be accessed by any device.
Email is the underpinning technology for using the Internet. Gmail, despite some early missteps (including the refusal to enable folders and other organising devices), has now become the most easily used service, and the adverts which make it free are easily ignored.
Pedagogic Challenge
The key challenge could be: why do I need another email address? It could also be: do people actually pay attention to emails, especially if they work in a Facebook environment. There is much to be done to think about the ways email (originally one of the few key forms of online communication) can be reharnessed to create a great, simple e-learning tool to enhance student educational achievement. The very act of requiring students to create and use a specialised email address can become part of the learning process, setting up expectations and scaffolding the way that they are to learn. It is notable that most of the scholarly research on the use of email dates from the last century… and, in the 1990s, there were many academics pondering whether email was something they should avoid!
Alternatives
Microsoft (Live), Yahoo, and other major internet companies dominate the free web-based email market. many students will have their own email addresses; they will also have student email addresses. One reason to have several emails is to use them to manage different kinds of communication, identities and online services.
Read…
Luders, M. 2008. Conceptualizing personal media. New Media and Society. 10.5: 683-702.
Harasim, L. 2001. Learning networks: a field guide to teaching and learning online (because it shows how far we have come; but how the concepts from the 1990s remain very pertinent).
Reich, J. et al. 2008. Best Ideas for Teaching with Technology: A Practical Guide for Teachers, by Teachers contains a short chapter on creative uses of email.
