Using Gmail +1 Email Addresses to Comply With COPPA for Student Online Accounts

Have you ever wanted to use an online technology tool with your students, but couldn't, because they're under age 13? That problem has plagued me for several years as I've attempted to find solutions for my fifth graders in a 1:1 netbook class. Thanks to a couple of ed-tech resource people I follow, I now have a workaround!

First, the citations:

Thank you to Richard Byrne who writes the Free Technology for Teachers blog. His article How to Register Students for Services When They Don't have Email Addresses got me started on the road to a solution.

Then, while researching COPPA and its rules, I found the FTC's Complying With COPPA: Frequently Asked Questions. If you're looking at the COPPA guidelines for classroom use of online technology tools, scroll down to M: COPPA and Schools. The key is to safeguard student identity and information, especially if they're under the magic age of 13.

Finally, to round out my understanding of how to create a Gmail +1 email address for each of my students, I ran into Stormy Cullum's Gmail +1 ~ Create Student Email (Survive Under 13 Guidelines - COPPA). Stormy does a great job of explaining how to use Google's tools to solve this problem. If you use (or would be willing to use) Gmail and/or GAFE (Google Apps for Education), read on.

The above citations, if you read the 3 articles, will show you the way. Here's my brief summary — the reason why you're reading this article...

So, I wanted to have my kids use ed.ted.com which would enable me to take any YouTube video and easily create some pre- and post-video watching questions and discussions online for my kids. I want them to engage with these videos, and I want a way to verify that they have done this online work. Since I "flip" some of my lessons, this idea is especially useful for when I assign a video for my students to watch and engage with. However, in order to comply with COPPA, ed.ted.com will only allow students to create accounts if they're over age 12. My kids are not. I even wrote to them to ask if they knew of a workaround. They suggested I have the students' parents create the accounts for the students. While this would work, I didn't want to ask parents to do this. I wanted them to know and give consent for their children to use this resource; I just didn't want to bother them to do the legwork of setting things up for me.

So, I started searching for a way that I could manage this sign-up process for each of my students and, at the same time, control the accounts and avoid having kids give personal information to the folks at ed.ted.com. That's when I discovered the Gmail +1 idea.

The idea is simple. I created a new Gmail account for my class. I also forwarded all the emails for this new class account to my own Gmail email address. I suppose you could do this with an email address even if it's not Gmail; mine just happens to be a gmail address. Then, for each student I use the +1 idea. It works like this: sign up each student for ed.ted.com using the class email address, but add +1 to the end of the email address. For example, if your class email is myclass@gmail.com, then you would use something like this as an email address for the first kid in your class: myclass+firstkid@gmail.com. The second kid's email address would then be: myclass+secondkid@gmail.com, and so on. Whenever any of these student email accounts (they're actually just aliases of the primary account, myclass@gmail.com) receive any email, they all go straight to the primary account which, you'll recall, forwards all email to my email address. I've created a filter in Gmail to bypass my Inbox and just file these emails in a certain "folder", so to speak, where I can deal with them when I'm ready. For example, for the ed.ted.com I will need to verify each kid's account by clicking on a link in an email sent to the kid's myclass+firstkid@gmail.com account. Other than that, though, I shouldn't need to do anything else to manage the ed.ted.com account. By the way, the primary class email account is not accessible to my students because I don't share the password with them. That's why they'll never see any of "their" email that may be sent to this made-up email address.

The student signs into his/her account using this email address and whatever password he/she used when creating the account. I can choose to provide a password or simply allow the students to create their own. It doesn't matter, because all correspondence for the ed.ted.com account goes straight to me, and not the student(s). That allows them to remain anonymous when creating or using these online tools, whether it's ed.ted.com or something else that may be off-limits to kids under 13. I probably wouldn't use this for all online tools; only those that would work while allowing kids to remain anonymous online and protect their privacy.

I should mention one last point. Each year I set up my students with a class number, usually from 01 to 25 (or however many kids I have that year). They use their number plus first name as an identifier for many things in my class. So, their email address will probably be something like: myclass+00paul@gmail.com. I always reserve the class number 00 for me, and my name is Paul, so I'm "00paul" in all my examples when I'm teaching kids how to identify themselves. This system has worked well for us for many years, so I'm planning to use it for this "fake" email system, too.

Pick One Horse and Ride It

A fellow blogger, Bradley Chambers, recently wrote an article about BYOD entitled The Promise And Failure of BYOD in Education. In it he does a great job of outlining why a school should never let kids bring whatever device they want to school and expect to do any meaningful projects or design any meaningful assignments that tie in with the school's curriculum. Why? Because the management of these varied devices will be an IT nightmare. I agree with him completely.

In our school we use a different approach with our BYOD laptop program. We prescribe a minimum set of laptop standards (notice I said laptop, not tablet, iPad, or other device), including the "horsepower" needed to run our short list of open source software that makes our program work. Most kids this year brought in Windows 8 touch screen 11.6" Asus netbooks. A few brought in either a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. All of these options "work" in our setting because they all run the list of open source, cross-platform software we require.

A couple of students brought in the new Surface RT which doesn't work so well with some of our software requirements because Microsoft has locked it into the Windows Store. Most things work, but not all. These kids constantly have to either work around the limitations, or must go to our Windows 7 lab to finish projects or assignments. A few who tried to use iPads found even more limitations, eventually gave up and spent $300-400 on a new netbook. Finally, I have a few students who cannot afford a netbook. Our principal has amassed a whole inventory of donated netbooks, given to the school by students who've graduated and moved on (or up) to a full laptop for their high school years. 

Our school ends after eighth grade, and several students now have used their fifth grade netbook for four years, until they graduated and moved on to another school. Treated properly, a well-maintained netbook can give an upper-elementary and/or middle school student several years of service. Given the relatively low cost of entry ($300-400 or so), the fact that a netbook is a "real computer" that runs most Windows software with no problem — especially the list we give our students to download before school starts — we will continue using this computing option for the foreseeable future.

e-Portfolios Using Evernote and iX500 Scanners

In a surprising turn-of-events just before school started (2013-2014), our 5-8 grade staff began working with e-Portfolios for our students using Evernote and iX500 scanners. Since I ended up being the school's "admin" for the Business Evernote account (schools receive a nice discount for opening up a business account with at least 5 users: normally $120/year; now only $30/year per teacher), I put together a proposed e-Portfolio Cycle to be used in our 5-8 grade classes. My middle school colleagues will probably modify this workflow to suit their needs; I offer it here for anyone who would like to check out the ideas I'm using.

Teaching With Netbooks

Today while preparing for a presentation with my staff I remembered a resource I used back when I was starting my journey as a netbook teacher. I would be remiss if I didn't give credit to Brad Flickinger, an educator who lives and teaches in Colorado, for the resources he's shared over the past 4 years. I was able to participate in an online version of FETC where Brad spoke about Netbook Teaching in a very practical way. He later posted those 3 videos on YouTube:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

In January 2010 he led a session at FETC in Orlando. I recorded the audio and took some notes. This was one year before our school began its netbook program. His presentation is posted here if you'd like to give a listen.

Brad also wrote a book on Netbook Teaching, which is available on Amazon. His Teaching With Netbooks website was one of the first resources I found on the topic back in 2010.

Thanks, Brad, for all the resources and for sharing what you've learned along the way!

Using DropItToMe To Collect Student Work

In our netbook classroom everyone has their own netbook. We use them daily for multiple projects and assignments. When it comes time to turn in work done on netbooks I have my students do it electronically rather than printing them out and turning in paper. This has several advantages:

• saves paper and trees
• reduces paper clutter
• student still has his copy as backup
• teacher has a duplicate and can edit as needed
• teacher can do grading and feedback work on preferred device 
• the option always exists to print out the papers
• teacher and student can collaborate using email or another system

Dropbox for File Management

In the past, since all our students have Dropbox installed on their netbooks, I would share a folder with them and have each student place a copy of their assignment file in the appropriate shared folder. For example:

• book report turn in folder Q1
• beginning of year story turn in folder
• space camp podcast turn in folder

You get the idea. Each student had access to each of these "turn in" folders and simply copied-and-pasted their file into the appropriate folder. In turn, I would see all the files come in as students did their thing. Unfortunately, each student could see all the other students' files, too! Occasionally, someone messed up and we lost a few files due to student error or prank.

DropItTo.Me As In-between Step

Now, we use DropItToMe. My DropItToMe account is tied to my Dropbox account. Students log into DropItToMe, upload their assignment or project file(s), and log out. That's it from their perspective. They don't need to accept my shared folder invitations for each and every project or assignment "turn in" folder. They simply remember one thing: DropItToMe. In fact, I have a link to my DropItToMe account on my website. Take a look. You can't hurt it without my password!

On my end I receive students' work, nicely organized by student number as follows:

• 01george math17
• 02sam math17
• 03sally spelling22
• 04mary science43
• 04mary spelling22

I can control-click on all the spelling, for example, and highlight the whole batch at once. Then, I drag those files into my spelling folder. Next, I control-click (command-click on a Mac) on the math, and so on, until all my files are organized in an appropriate folder, leaving my DropItToMe folder empty until a new student file comes in. Sometimes I also move certain folders out of my Dropbox to save space. That happens with audio or video files that may be quite large and use up my limited Dropbox space.

The process above is similar to what we do with paper, except I do all the sorting with electronic files. With paper I have a bin for each assignment due that morning and students self-sort their work into the appropriate bin. With electronic work I found it safer and easier to do the batch selection and sorting myself. Plus, if a student files his work with the correct filename, it's easy to do a quick SEARCH for anything that comes up missing. This system hasn't eliminated missing student files, but it's made my job easier when I need to track down a file. Once again, if a student has followed directions and has the original file still in his dropbox folder, he can simply re-send it via my DropItToMe account. We do that all the time, since students do forget. The biggest problem is mis-named files. My policy is to not even open files named "untitled" or "book report" since I don't know at a glance whose file it is. Often, even opening the file will yield no information about student identity. So, I've simply told my students to re-submit the files and check your filename first. As a last resort in a few cases I've opened up "untitled" and discovered it was Johnny's missing assignment. Of course, he also neglected to keep the original, so this was the only way to retrieve his work. Fortunately, this happens only occasionally. As I often say to parents of students in my computer classes: learning to use a computer is as much about listening and following directions as it is about learning to use Windows or Open Office. If you teach children (or adults) you know what I mean.

Give DropItToMe a try. It's a great addition to your Dropbox workflow as a teacher. It works great for any project—even projects unrelated to teaching, learning, teachers and students — where you must collaborate with others and collect their digital project files into one central place for further work to be done. 

A Netbook Teacher Sets Up A New Netbook

As a netbook-using teacher working with a class full of netbook-using students I try to keep up with the technology times. That goes for the latest netbook technology.

The other day I was surprised and delighted when my principal gave me a new netbook for the 2013-2014 school year. This 11.6" laptop is much snappier than my 10" model with half the memory and a slower processor. When I asked him "why" he gave me a new netbook to use he told me he wanted "our fourth and fifth grade teachers to have the same netbook that we recommend to our student families". I thought that made sense, so I brought the netbook home and began the unpacking process.

It occurred to me that I should document the process and share it with my students. We ask them to set up their own netbook at home before coming to school in the Fall, but every year someone needs help with one or several of the steps. So, I spent today creating little videos with Screencast-o-matic and posted them on my website. The actual video files are stored in Dropbox, which works perfectly for this purpose. Take a look at the post on my website where all the videos are linked, and share a comment if you think I forgot anything.

Why Use "The Cloud"?

At my school we use several "cloud" services — apps that reside on the Internet and allow us to share or collaborate with one another. Two of them are Dropbox and Google Drive. Watch and listen to why and how this all works.