The Drum on Student Email

1. What student email?
Brisbane Catholic Education now provides all students with a Live@edu email account. The purposes of the student email addresses are to:

• facilitate student to teacher communications and file sharing
• facilitate student to student collaboration
• allow access to the St Catherine's Student Portal
• allow access to LIFE, our new learning management system

2. A Cautionary Note:

As the email accounts are automatically generated though our student database (eMinerva), the addresses contain students' surnames. While this is not best practice in terms of maintaining online privacy, BCE Information Services personnel assure us that if the addresses are only used as intended - to access secure services within BCE and for communications with other BCE email addresses - then our students' safety will not be compromised. BCE's email filters are stringent and extremely effective in blocking spam. Though a small amount may slip through from time to time, students will be taught to recognise spam and phishing emails, the possible unsavoury consequences they present and how to deal with them.

3. Required: an "anonymous" secondary email address

Students will need an email address for their Apple ID and to access several online tools they require in 2013-14. We recommend that their BCE email address is not used for these purposes as it contains their surname. Here's what we suggest instead:

1. Use a free email service such as Gmail to create an email address for your child.
2. Decide together on an appropriate username which does not compromise their privacy.
3. Decide on a password with your child that is secure but easy for them to recall.
4. Keep a record of the password so that you may also monitor the activity on the email account.
5. Remind them that this password is never to be shared with anyone else.
6. Be ready to provide the email address when your child's teachers ask for it.

4. Which online tools does my child need for school?

Your child will be using the following valuable web 2.0 tools for their learning over the next two years:

• Evernote - please create an account at https://www.evernote.com/Registration.action 
• Fotobabble - please create an account at http://www.fotobabble.com/register/index and do NOT sign in with Facebook. No children at St Catherine's should be using or accessing a Facebook account.
• VoiceThread - please create an account at https://voicethread.com/login/ 
• Dropbox - please WAIT until an email invitation is sent from the Year 5 Dropbox account to create this one. This will give both your child and the Year level account extra Dropbox storage space.

Access to these tools may be restricted for children under 13 years of age due to legislation in the US. For this reason it is important that you create the accounts at home, on your child's behalf. Use the secondary email address (e.g. Gmail) that you have created for their Apple ID. Use the same (or very similar) password as their email address. This does go against best practice for password security but it will be much easier for them to access these accounts if they use a familiar password. Keep a record of the password yourself so you can monitor their use of the tools.

5. Something else to keep in mind:

Your child will not need to use this secondary email address for any school-required communications. Their MyBCE email address will be used for all communications with their teachers and required collaboration with classmates. The secondary address is only required for account registrations for certain school-required online tools and services. Strict guidelines should be set with your child about how and when they may use their secondary email account for their own purposes.

As with any online activity, safe practices will form part of our Digital Citizenship program. This program is embedded throughout all school activities and will be ongoing over the two year program. Support from home is expected by following the Policy and Guidelines outlined in our Parent Handbook which has been provided to families of all continuing students. This document is also available on this blog. Click the Parent Handbooks link in the menu bar above.

So what do I have to do?

1. Create an email address for your child, using Gmail or similar free service. Refer to the guidelines in Section 3. above.
2. Use this email address to create an Apple ID for your child. After further deliberation and consultation, we realise that an exclusive Apple ID will be your child's best option. This way your child's iPad won't become cluttered with iMessages, apps, photos, music and videos etc that you may have/take/purchase on a shared account. 
3. Use this exclusive Apple ID to sign into the iTunes App Store to download your child's school apps. Free apps are listed on this previous Padwise post. Paid apps will be redeemable using the codes that will be emailed to your child's BCE student email account. More information on this soon.