ePals members can only be contacted by an adult who has an approved ePals profile. You will always be able to find basic information about every member who contacts you through ePals. ePals staff will have additional information on every person who connects with you.

So others emailing your students have to be using ePals mail also. I can understand the benefit of this, but this also introduces some limitations. The key here is accountability I think: ePals is providing an email environment where people who contact your students are accountable because they have a verified profile on the website.

I’d be interested to learn what you end up going with in terms of student email.

For parents, another option worth checking out that is $1 per month per child is Zoobah. I have not used it personally but am going to check it out. I was thinking I’d recommend that my own kids use their ePals accounts as their primary email addresses, but since there is this limit on external contacts that won’t work for them to use as a “regular” email account. I think Zoobah will. It’s designed for parents rather than teachers though. With COPPA requirements for parental permission I think it can be a good route to encourage parent setup of children’s email accounts when they are under 13.

Gaggle.net is another provider of monitored student email, and they do provide a free version as well. It includes advertising and has smaller mailbox quotas for students. They have some paid options too with more features, but my understanding is that with a free Gaggle email account or a free ePals account students CAN email others outside those particular email networks. Gaggle has a page on COPPA compliance which is worth reading and checking out whether you are using Gaggle for email or not, the responsibilities of school leaders to get parent permission and monitor use are the same with whatever service you go with.

I strongly recommend that schools and teachers use a monitored email service like ePals or Gaggle for student email accounts. Of course students do and will have their own email accounts outside the scope of the school or teacher’s control, but if you’re officially encouraging students to setup email accounts I think it makes sense from a practical as well as liability standpoint to use a monitored solution like ePals or Gaggle.

Another possibility - why not setup a Moodle as part of your existing site(s)? If Grapple decides they want it to host on their own domain, you can just move the whole thing over to a new server.

I don’t get why you want a Ning when you have FOSS alternative (e.g. Drupal or Moodle) available.

Miguel

I had been thinking about using ePals email. Thanks for the insight.