Email Addresses for Kids

As a teacher I have been considering many Web 2.0 tools for use in my classroom. One common hurtle I have been coming across is that children are often not allowed to have email addresses. It is understandable why parents would not want their child to have access to an email account as significant problems can arise through an unsupervised account.

But for children to get access to many of the Web 2.0 tools they need an email account to sign up. Upon further research I learned that many email providers allow for a personalized (managed) email address that can link to their parents account. For example, on gmail, parents can add multiple identities on one account. This allows you to send an email from your email account with your child's name in the From line. Gmail will allow users to set up multiple joint identities on their accounts and filters can be added to the inbox to ensure the messages are organized. Although this is certainly a big brother approach to emailing at a young age, it is a fantastic option for those parents who do not feel comfortable with their child having their own account.

Of course teaching kids how to be safe online is the most important step in online safety, however with all the advancements in technology and web 2.0 tools I was surprised that there are not more sites and programs to ensure children have safer emailing practice. It would be interesting for gmail to create a gmail kids site where kids could get their own email addresses (when they are under 13), where spam is not able to filter into the accounts, language is monitored (it can filter for key words such as sex, drugs, etc). and a parent can have access to monitor the emails being sent from the account.  This is possibly the next wave of emailing ... maybe I should sell the idea to gmail!