Cindy forwarded a post by Kim Cofino that describes how to share a Gmail account with others (e.g., an elementary class). For whatever reason, Google allows the attachment of additional information to the name in a Gmail address and this additional information could be the name of a student (for those who are familiar with web forms, it appears to work in a similar manner to the attachment of variables to the URL). For example, information could be added to my Gmail address as follows: markgrabe+cindyg@gmail.com.
As I read the post, this hack does not get you all of the way to where you want to go. You need to also add a filter to gmail to recognize expected additions (in this case the names of students). With the filter, when the filter is tripped by an incoming email, a label appears in the Gmail sidebar. So a filter set to detect cgrabe would be triggered when incoming mail was addressed to markgrabe+cindyg. Once applied, students could connect to the common account and check the sidebar to see if they have received any email.
The Cofino post includes a link to a screencast that offers a demonstration.
Is this worth the trouble? I would assume the value is in convincing the administration that you will take responsibility for the email of your students because you will have the capability of screening all material.
Could the system be abused? I would think so. There is not really a way to set priviledges to my knowledge so you still really have one account and no way to identify who might be sending outbound mail or who looks at what within the mail received. With access to the account, couldn’t you assume the identity of the teacher or any other student?
