Managing

Right in Class
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Tutorial


	Managing ePals in the classroom

		E-mail Access You will need to determine how students will access E-mail. There are a variety of ways. Student E-mail Students have their own E-mail. Using district or a commercial online E-mail service like ePals.com. This is harder to track what is sent but using a CC to the teacher or the Forward tool prior to sending E-mail builds in the teacher check part. Teacher E-mail Students create messages in a word processing program and teachers send the E-mail through their own accounts. This works for small projects and allows the maxium teacher control. Class E-mail Account Have your district create a class E-mail account for you. Then the messages are sent through one account to your connecting classroom. Getting Started Start small. If you are rotating students onto computers take a week to draft letters and then send the following week. That allows you as a teacher to have time to teach your friendly letter writing lessons as well as help students edit E-mail prior to sending. Work with the partner teacher to set up a time schedule for sending emails. Once per month is a good goal. Discuss who will send first and when that will happen. Once you have sent emails back and forth a couple of times and the students have been checked off then I allow my students to send independently. Keep track of who has received E-mail and who hasn’t that way you will need to let the partner teacher know when little Susie hasn’t gotten any E-mail from her ePal.


	Set up E-mail Accounts

There are many ways to set up student E-mail accounts. ePals www.epals.com They are created to handle student accounts. It is free but for a yearly fee you can get some really nice teacher tools. ePals has a chatroom tool.

Create a Partner List

Once ePals have been matched create an electronic copy in WORD or Excel of the ePal matches and their E-mail addresses. You can use the hyperlink to tool to link to the E-mail address This helps to keep the students locate and find their ePal’s name and E-mail address. Sort this in a shared area of your network so it is available. Download ePalist Sheet (.xls) Download Sent List Sheet (.xls)


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