EASY E-MAIL ACTIVITIES

Before beginning your e-mail activities, give students a chance to play with the technology by e-mailing one another safe, social messages. A definite "let's get silly" phase usually occurs when introducing new technology (witness the overabundance of sounds and transitions in students' first PowerPoints!), so make sure to devote an entire class period to just playing with the technology -- sending school-appropriate, but not necessarily educational, e-mails. That opportunity should satisfy their curiosity about the technology, and give you a chance to discover bugs and/or skill issues before using the e-mail for educational purposes. You'll be surprised at how fast students pick up skills and learn the program's features. They even might discover features you didn't know about!

Below you will find several simple activities for getting students started with e-mail. The activities can be used to teach students to use e-mail or to encourage students to practice e-mail use. All can be adapted for individual or group use, and completed in the classroom, in a school computer lab, or (depending on your e-mail program) from home.

• Following a lesson or lecture, ask students to e-mail you the top three things they learned. (You might be surprised!)
• Assign a note taker to each lesson or lecture. Have the note taker attach his or her notes to an e-mail and send the e-mail to you. Forward those notes to all students and have each student e-mail to you a summary of the notes or a question that arose from reading the notes.
• Each day, ask one student to find a Web site related to a topic they're studying. Have that student e-mail the link to you along with an explanation of why the site is relevant. After you have approved the link, have the student e-mail the URL to the rest of the class.
• Assign elementary students one section of a textbook chapter and ask them to e-mail a summary of their section to one another.
• Encourage students to interview one another, students in other classrooms, or teachers via e-mail, and then e-mail the questions and answers back to you.

Next: Tips and tricks.