Student Emails and Vacation!

The students are very excited today as they learned how to use their own school email accounts!!!  They were amazed and think they are pretty important now (which they are!).

The emails are set up through Google and our school district.  Student emails can only be used to email students and staff who attend the Howard-winn school district.  Emails to parents and incoming emails from other sources will be monitored through the tech department and may not be successfully sent through.  The purpose of using these emails is for education and communication within the school district, as well as eventually sending attachments of work etc.   So, as a parent, you won't be able to directly send an email to your 3B child nor will they be able to directly send one to you.  It is for educational communication only!!!

Your child can check his or her email by following these steps:
     1.  opening up the internet and going to the school home page (http://www.howard-winn.k12.ia.us)
     2.  scroll to the bottom and click on "login"
     3.  put in login name and password
         *student login names are their last name and first name.  No spaces or capitals.  An example
          would be for me, "keriankim"
     4.  their password is a 5 or 6 digit number that is their district student number.  They should know
          the number by now or have it written down as it is a number we use for other online activities.

This should take them to their email account.  Thus far, I have just shown them how to check their email, send one, and reply to those they receive.  To send to a classmate, to me, or someone within the school district, they first type the person's LAST name and a list of choices will come up for them to select the correct person's email.  They know what to do from there.

I have also discussed the safety aspect of using email.  Being it is controlled by Google and the school, it is very safe.  But this opportunity is a priveledge and can easily be taken away if problems arise.  Students should not be using this email account to send emails about plans for weekend or whatever.  It is for school communication only.

Which brings me to my vacation.  As I have mentioned before, I am leaving for a vacation to the Caribbean with my husband and will be gone all next week.  I have told the students I would love for them to send me emails each day letting me know how the day went and what they learned.  I will be checking my school email on a regular basis while gone and would love to hear what the students did and learned about that day (even though I know as i wrote the lesson plans).  They can email from any computer any where, as long as they go to the Howard-Winn homepage first.

They are very excited and I can't wait to read some of their emails!

Again, along with that, please remember that if something comes up and you need to contact the school next week, call the office.  Do not email me as I will not be at school.

There will be no assignment for blogging about at home reading until I get back.  I would love for the students to finish the books that were sent home though so we can start a new genre when I return.

Thanks and happy emailing 3B!