Re: computerdisc-l: student email

["Mitzi Still" <hudmit@panola.com>]

I am Patti's partner who used gaggle.net this year.  I really liked it.  I
did have some blocked messages that were strange as Patti said; however,
most of the inappropriate messages were sent to my students, not vice versa.
I told my students that messages with "naughty" words would be sent to my
computer and reminded them frequently that they should tell their friends
that I would receive those messages and instead of them.  The only trouble I
had that bothered me was that they wanted to go to the links that were sent
to them in their messages.  Some of them were not desirable places.  When
the filter was on before the State Department took it off, we didn't have a
problem, but without the filter, it was too risky.

We began checking email every Tuesday and Friday.  Eventually, we checked
only on Tuesday for about 15 minutes.  Most of them really enjoyed it.  Some
lost interest after a while and never check theirs.

Patti and I used email on our last nine weeks test.  We had the students use
a  search engine to locate a picture of a famous person.  They had to copy
the URL of that web page and paste it in a message that was sent to our
email addresses.  We looked for the following criteria:  We received it, the
link was included in the message, the link took us to a site that included a
picture of the famous person, the student's signature was included.  We had
to change people each period because we discovered that the students in our
second period class were using the history to find the website!  We used Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., President Clinton, General Colin Powell, and Elvis
Presley, to name a few.

Sorry this was so long.

Mitzi Still
Batesville Junior HIgh


-----Original Message-----
From: Dane Conrad <dane@firstbaptistchurch.org>
To: computerdisc-l@Lists.MsState.Edu <computerdisc-l@Lists.MsState.Edu>
Date: Tuesday, May 09, 2000 9:05 AM
Subject: computerdisc-l: student email


>I used Gaggle.net this year in my class during the
>4th nine weeks and liked the service.
>
>We did have several problems with the service not
>working frequently during certain parts of the day; but
>after a week or two they must have gotten the problem
>straightened out.
>
>It was a great companion to Info-Bridge, especially in that
>I could monitor the messages. I had several messages that
>got caught because of inappropriate language but few that
>were caught and blocked for no reason at all. This was a big
>difference from the Info-Bridge software where the teacher
>has basically no control or monitoring window. When we had
>to just use Info-Bridge, I went and got a program from Virtual
>Network Computing that would let me see any computer's
>desktop and open windows from my computer--I played the
>Big Brother role really well. It also created some fun occasions
>when I reminded them that I was monitoring their work by
>taking control of their mouse or keyboard and typing a
>comment or warning on their message or document.
>
>Gaggle worked okay for me when the service was available.
>
>Blessings,
>Dane Conrad
>North Forrest High School
>
>
>
>