The standard email is a staple of any digital work. We all know it and is a great way to communicate
Time
Simple and quick to send emails. Great for simple communication.
Access for Students and Parents
Easy for most students and parents to use. Accessible on most Internet connected devices.
Updating and Modifying
You can’t update emails once they are sent. If is something that may need to be updated, I send an email with a link to the information on my web site. This way I can change the info without re-sending the email.
Longevity
It has been and will be around for a long time.
Cost
Free, but the school owns your school Gmail account.
My Usage
We all use it all the time. It is a good way to communicate, especially with parents. I only use it in a limited way with my students, though. I use it for mass email with students but not so much for individual students. It’s too hard to keep track of communication with individual students (100+ students in high school for me) via email, especially with Gmail. LMS systems make email much more effective for communication with individual students.
Tips:
- Include yourself in any group email that you send to students and parents. This way you get a copy of what you sent and you can easily archive it. It also gives you a list of email addresses that you used so that you can copy and paste the list for later.
- Creating groups for mass emailing in Google is a bit of a pain. I create my group lists either from Google Classroom (send an email to the entire class in Google Classroom and get the list from there) or from a prior email.