7.2 How to Use Email to Enhance Instruction

Email offers almost as many opportunities for communication between teachers and students as does the classroom environment. For example, when having students complete their written work on computer rather than by hand, email provides opportunities for more frequent feedback between teacher and students. After emailing a draft of their work to their teachers for feedback, students can analyze and edit their compositions with comparative ease. With email, the student also has the opportunity to email questions to the teacher while their work is in progress. Using email, the turnaround time for pre-evaluation input from the teacher and evaluation for grading purposes is minimized. Writing activities can be written, emailed, reviewed, revised, turned in, graded, and returned, all outside of class time. Class time is freed-up for discussions and instruction. (McDonald, 1997).

In addition, email can be used to initiate and carryout an online discussion of a topic the teacher assigns. An email based discussion offers some unique advantages. First, the discussion content can be tracked, printed out, and/or saved for review and response. Unlike a verbal discussion that moves quickly on to other topics, email discussion let individuals respond thoughtfully and completely. This is particularly useful for quieter students who might be reluctant to voice their views in a classroom discussion. For such students, email discussions give them an opportunity to respond and participate fully without the pressures inherent in real-time verbal discussions.

Sherry James recounted in Media & Methods (September/October, 2001) the instructional applications of email used by Kathryn Robinson, a social studies teacher in the Baltimore County Public Schools, Baltimore, MD. Ms. Robinson uses email to answer questions posed by her students. She has found that her ESL students are more receptive to asking questions in email than in class. She also assigns online articles for high school students to read after which they email her their completed work as in one particular project requiring a comparison of Pilgrims to Puritans. “After they read the article, students can email the teacher with a chart showing the distinctions between the two groups” (32).

Other classroom-related purposes can be implemented with networked -mail as students, teachers, staff, and administrators within the WAN carry out collaborative research projects, plan club and activity events, express interest in or availability for committee work or other voluntary services, receive and send emergency notifications, and the list goes on and on.

How might you use email for academic purposes? Check the links below or search the Web for more ideas. In a one-page summary, describe the ideas you found useful in your search (including their source) and then summarize a way in which you will use email when you teach.

Want to know more? Check out these sites:

Google Email Classroom

http://www.otan.us/webfarm/emailproject/email.htm

http://fno.org/apr01/email.html

http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/curriculum/ict/email/

http://www.epals.com/

http://www.iecc.org/

http://www.hardin.k12.ky.us/res_techn/TEC/integrate/emailnclass.htm

http://www.cln.org/int_email.html

Sources:

James, S. (2001, September/October). Technology at work in social studies classes. Media & Methods, 37, 32.