Pupil Email : Debate
I have been thinking over the last few weeks about school based pupil email provision. I have to confess we have been considering investing in an advanced Google Apps for education (paying so we can apply a policy) system for pupils after a very successful model with staff. When providing for pupils a school really can not provide any sort of ICT system without some sort of save guarding filtering or quarantine policy and this is what Google charge for.
We all want our pupils to be digital natives, confident with technology, educated to use it effectively and safely but should the school provide pupil email accounts ?
I ask this as I am beginning to think they are a bit of a hinderance to online learning via school VLE systems.
The problem arises when pupils sign up to the VLE using their school provided email address. This means all VLE generated email is then sent to their school email server where it can be subject to filtering and as the messages are auto generated most filtering solutions block some if not all automated emails.
This isn’t the main issue though. The problem, as I see it is pupils don’t use their school email address as their main email account and therefore it isn’t checked on a regular basis. If pupils sign up to the VLE using their own personal Gmail accounts the VLE messages are responded too much more readily.
For example. If a news post is added to course forum in Moodle an email is sent out to all students within 30 minutes of posting. The reality is most students are checking their personal accounts 2-3 times per night and their school account only once or twice per week. Students who have signed up to the VLE with an address they check regularly end up enjoying a much more engaging learning experience with the VLE in that they are more readily involved with discussions and events as they happen.
So, what do you think ?
Is there an issue with pupils using their personal email addresses on the VLE ?
Well the fact that all communication takes place through the learning platform and the emails that are sent are from the platform rather than the teacher personally is this issue not covered ?
If school, pupil communication is managed through the learning platform does a school need to provide any pupil email provision at all when the VLE carries out the logging and filtering ?
Referring to the diagram at the top of the post, the question is where do we really need our VLE emails to be going for the learning platform to be a success and what (if any) are the consequences for schools ?
This is something that we’ve thought about before as well…
In a very similar situation to you. All our staff/pupils are given a school email account when they join, this is entered into their Moodle profile/etc & where all school communication goes.
However, the vast majority of our students favour another email service & good number of our staff also use something else now. Gmail is by far the most popular option, and staff in particular (including me) have their school accounts setup to forward all their mail on to Gmail.
For us, the thing to look at was why aren’t people using the school web mail? The answer is actually pretty simple, it’s no way near as good as any of the other offerings. Limited storage, organisation, etc, etc. With all this in mind, switching our school mail service is probably a major step towards getting it properly used. But even if we did this, would I choose to use it rather than forward everything to one single point?
So, do we help users with setting up the mail to forward somewhere else? Some simple instructions on that process solves the problem of students entering personal addresses, and certainly with Gmail you can also get your replies to appear as though they come from your school mail account too.
My other thought on privacy and personal addresses. If you do decide to allow users to enter their personal emails into Moodle profiles why not just hide all the email addresses by default & get rid of the option where users can change this? That way only admins would ever see the contact details.
Personally, I don’t think I have any huge issues with using personal addresses for this. The goal after all is to make sure students actually get the content going out, do it in the best way possible. The important part is that policies are carefully constructed so staff are aware of what communication is appropriate.
Thinking forward, I think as a school we should always be able to provide email addresses for students, but should be open to the mail we send out going to wherever is most convenient for the user.
Shouldn’t be an issue with us using personal emails in school specifically if we’re going to use it for VLE. Fairly certain everyone has their own email by now which is used regularly as you stated, so surely it would be wise to let them use them.
I think really all web email sites should be unblocked as most of the time they’re used for productive uses anyway, and if they are used unproductively, then as to would the school email address.
On a similar note unblock gmail and google docs!