What can you do when you want your kids to sign up for Ning, or PBWiki or any number of really cool applications on the web, and you suddenly realize that each student needs an email account to register? While this might not be a problem with older students, I know in my elementary school, I do not want my students armed with an unmonitored, active email account on my watch.
However, I do want them to have their voices heard in the global community. After doing a search, I stumbled across a simple way to create a dummy account for each student, which would give them access to the applications, but not allow them to have a “live” email account. This will only work for those sites that don’t require email confirmation.
I set up a gmail account (www.gmail.com), something simple that the kids can easily remember. For example, “ps123kids@gmail.com.” This is the active account over which I have complete control. I can use this account to send and receive mail. Once that’s established, I have the kids follow a formula as they sign onto sites like Ning or PBWiki, where an email address is required. In this case the formula is:
“ps123kids+STUDENTNAMERoomNumber@gmail.com.”
i.e.
“ps123kids+John217@gmail.com”
I always have my students use a first name and room number (add a last initial if more than one student has the same first name).
This “dummy” account satisfies the application’s need to be fed an email address, but at the same time, does not give the student a working email account. If anyone writes to your student’s account, the emails will come directly to you. You will also be able to see which student was meant to be the recipient of the email. That could be interesting.
Now, if someone has a work-around for sites like Voki, that require an email activation, please let me know!
Thanks so much for sharing the how-to on this great tip about setting up accounts for students without email addresses. I know this will benefit many educators including those who read my blog. I will be linking to this post soon.
Lisa Nielsen
Blogging about educating innovatively at http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com
Try…
http://www.mailcatch.com/en/disposable-email
Description from their website…
“MailCatch is an email service that allows you to create temporary disposable mailboxes, in a completely anonymous way. When you are asked for an email by a website and you do not want to give your (for fear of spam), you can simply give whatever mailbox name you want on the mailcatch.com domain (like whatever@mailcatch.com). Then you come here, type in the mailbox name and check your mail. We get the spam, not you! The ultimate anti-spam service!”
When the site sends a confirmation, the “+name” function for gmail usually works. You need to check to be sure, but for example in Voicethreads (my new favorite), when the student puts in Room14+AlexR@gmail.com, the activation goes to the Room14@gmail account with the +AlexR identifier. Unfortunately you have to do the activations from the gmail account but you can usually do an entire class in 10-15 minutes. Sometimes I even do the sign-up for the students this way with an aide or parent helper and then the students are ready to go with their username and password and never have to deal with the email portion. Hope this helps
http://www.mailinator.com/index.jsp
fake addresses w/o access to a “real” mailbox… well it will save any emails for just a few hours… so if you create a voki sign up with this, you can immediately go to mailinator and retrieve the email to confirm your registration, and then delete it.
remember that anyone can sign up for the usernames… multiple people use the same ones… so try and be a little creative with the name, and it should make it harder for people to get in that “mailbox” for the few short hours it is open.
Happy tech teaching