New York City – Forget Gmail and Hotmail.
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City public school kids and their parents could soon be getting their own free e-mail accounts from the Department of Education.
The city hopes the e-mail, which could be available as early as fall, will make it easier for principals and teachers to keep in contact with families.
“This is simply another parent engagement tool,” said DOE spokeswoman Maibe Gonzalez Fuentes.
“It’s about building school communities.”
Creating a citywide system also will help level the playing field since some schools are already providing school-based e-mails on their own, she added.
The DOE expects to get the accounts at no cost. In return, the provider can blast the city’s 800,000-plus public school parents with advertising. Parents can block the ads, and all student accounts will be ad-free, Gonzalez Fuentes said.
The system, though, won’t solve the broader issue of whether families have access to the Internet. If schools are increasingly relying on e-mail, it could leave some parents out, said Cornelia Brunner, of the Center for Children and Technology in New York.
“You don’t want to increase the gap between the information haves and have-nots,” she said.
Marina Celander, 41, whose kids go to elementary school in Brooklyn, said she likes getting school e-mail.
“But unless the DOE provides a space for people to check their e-mails daily, I don’t know how it would help a certain population of parents,” she said.
Great way for the schools to track down students, by logging their IP addresses…
Right and they’ll have to buy computersfor the kids to actually keep up with their email when their at home. They obviously don’t need email for school work when they’re in school.