E-mail and e-cards

With E-pals, you can set up e-mail accounts for your students that will enable you to communicate with them and they with each other and other e-pal members. This type of system offers a guaranteed child safe environment, but may limit your students if you wish them to mail other friends, or send English birthday or christmas e-cards etc.

There exist many child safe e-mail services, most of which promise to exclude unwanted adverts, risky links and so on. Another essential feature of a childsafe e-mail is that it does not require personal information such as identification numbers in order to sign-up. However, most ask for teacher or parent permission for the under 13s.

Most parents are OK with the idea of using a safe, teacher-moderated e-mail account for communicative activities, but it is still a good idea to check and get permission, especially in the case of the very young.

One good site for child safe e-mail can be found at Zilladog

The following links are to sites offering e-card services which we will evaluate during the course. If you know of any others, please post your comments.

SCHOLASTIC
ANIMATED CARDS
BLUE MOUNTAIN
MARLO