Are you looking for an email service for your child?
E-mail has become a main form of communication in today's world, both in our professional and personal lives. Kids and teens are wanting to hop on the bandwagon by creating their own e-mail accounts and even some school districts are giving elementary and middle school students a county approved e-mail address. Other districts turn off the e-mail capability (mainly for younger students) if they have access to Google Apps. Kids and teens will still find a way to create an e-mail account so our job as teachers and parents is to make sure they make educated decisions when it comes to this digital form of communication.
Kids in Today's Digital Age
Kids and teens are growing up in a text messaging and social media thriving world which is consumed by communicating with acronyms, poor grammar and an extensive use of emojis. LOLš Don't worry...I'm not knocking my emojis! Therefore, we need to inform them of proper e-mail etiquette and behavior before they send an embarrassing e-mail to a company, college or future employer. Kids know a lot about technology but we really can't assume they know the inner workings as well as the dangers of e-mail communication. That is why I created my E-mail 101 lesson that is available in Google Slides & PowerPoint. Teachers & parents can use this presentation and the student activities to address the basics of composing e-mails, receiving e-mails and proper e-mail etiquette. Be sure to check it out at the end of this post!Email Services
I'm not a parent yet but if I were, I would want to know that the e-mail service my child uses is safe. Someone asked me the other day what age I thought a child should be before they got an e-mail address. Really, if the child is mature and can type without it being a laborious task, then I think a child could easily handle having an e-mail account. This promotes writing and communication, so why not? With that being said, I would want a safe and secure e-mail platform that I could easily monitor. Here are 5 top e-mail services and their special features for kids and teens that I recommend checking out:
ZillaMail:
- Basic FREE account
- Premium subscription $1.99mo/$19.95 a year
- Parents have their own password to set up "buddy lists" so they can choose who their child emails
- Kids only receive emails from people on their approved buddy lists (no spam!)
- Parents can receive a copy of ALL incoming and outgoing mail
- Pop up free
- Try out their FREE demo {HERE}
Tocomail (geared more for teenagers):
- Free app
- Premium subscription $2.99mo/$29.99 a year
- Customize an avatar
- Drawing feature
- Audio-video messaging capabilities
- Quarantine box for emails that require supervision
- Parents receive a copy of each quarantined message in email notification
- Parents can approve or reject quarantined messages
- Profanity filter
Kidsemail:
- Free 30 day trial
- Subscriptions: $4.95 mo for up to 4 accounts/ $38.95 for 13 mo for up to 6 accounts
- Free app
- Parents can receive a copy of ALL incoming and outgoing mail
- Mail queue allows parents to intercept an email that failed the safety rules
- Time restrictions can be set for when your child can login
- Block senders
- Contact manager
- No ads
- GPS Tracker for those who use the free mobile app
- "Read It" feature will allow for e-mail to be read aloud
Read an honest review about Kidsemail over at Heather's blog and Stacy's blog.
Zoobuh:
- Subscription $1.00 mo
- Parents can receive a copy of ALL incoming and outgoing mail
- The mail queue allows parents to approve incoming and outgoing messages
- Parents can delete attachments without deleting the entire email
- Allow specific types of attachments (images, audio, video, pdf, etc)
- Customize bad word filter
- Time restrictions
- Block specific senders
- Activity log
- If you want FREE, then this might be the way to go (a few loop holes but still manageable)
- Customize filters (yes, older teens could figure out how to remove these...)
- Forward e-mails to parent's e-mail address
That's right, you can create a g-mail account that can be monitored by YOU for your child! Julie Masson does an exceptional job explaining how to do this in THIS blog post of hers. WikiHow also has a tutorial.
Invasion of Privacy Debate
Whether you think it is an invasion of privacy or not, we definitely have to teach our students and children the dos and don'ts when it comes to e-mail communication. Check out my E-mail 101 Google Slides & PowerPoint lessons. A quick video promo can be viewed below:
Let's do our job and protect and prepare our children from the dangers lurking in the digital world!
