Students E-mail.

[maniac]

How do you do it? At the moment all our students have a webmail account provided to them by medway council giving them an @medway.org.uk address.

 

The disadvantages to this are functionality is fairly limited, it's access through our internt line so sending and receiving large files can be an issue, and the main one is they all have a seperate username and password to access this system, which they're forever forgetting and it's a PITA to reset them.

 

I've put forwards the proposal of having a seperate exchange server onsite for students, and giving them an @nbc.medway.sch.uk address like we do for staff, and using outlook web access for them to use it. This would solve all the problems with having different usernames and passwords, and I think it would encourage more use of the e-mail system. It would also put us in more control, so we can monitor use of e-mail better, and also all the e-mail addresses would be associated with the students active directory accounts, which has a huge advantage in it's own right.

 

What do other schools do? Do students at your school have an exchange account, or do you give them a webmail account whether provided by your LEA, or RM easymail etc.

Is there a best practice on this issue, or any reasons why we should stick with what we have, or any reasons why we definitely shouldn't change it?

 

Your opinions are gratefully received.

 

Cheers,

 

Mike.

[localzuk]

We have a school domain 'mineheadmiddle.somerset.sch.uk' which, mail-wise, is served by the RM Easymail system. Kids get on with it ok. Personally I hate it but then thats me...

 

Our staff are all included on the LEA exchange system (so email addresses are at educ.somerset.gov.uk instead).

[webman]

We have an internal Linux mail system at the moment for all users, integrated into our AD and using SquirrelMail for internal/external web access (except a handful of users who rushed ahead and used crappy Outlook and/or Express :x)

 

We're going to migrate to Zimbra within 6-12 months - nice shiny web interface for 'em with distribution lists, calendars etc etc.

 

No software, maintenance or licence costs at all

[User3204]

We have a webmail server located onsite, the software is MDaemon from http://www.altn.com (well their UK distributer).

 

It _can_ integrate usernames and sync passwords with Windows AD (it doesn't because the two domains we have confuses it).

All staff an email that matches their staff network username (plus the more obvious aliases), and the students have an email that matches their student network username.

 

We try to make all staff use the webmail function, but a lot insist on using outlook.. dunno why..and the "feature" costs extra.

 

 

 

..This reminds me, I should import the new year 7 onto it, or sort out the sync'ing..

[kearton]

We also use MDaemon for the students. The UK distributor is Zen Software

http://www.zensoftware.co.uk/mdaemon/ They also do educational discounts.

MDaemon has it's own web client called WorldClient and the way we've got it setup the students can also access their email from home (or any other Internet connection)

[kylewilliamson]

We've got

 

[email protected] for staff users

[email protected] for student users

 

and then, for those who *also* use OWL on the County's Exchange System

 

[email protected]

 

Kyle

[blackcat]

We have onsite email server and all users are encouraged to use OWA. Limit the amount of recipients that a student can send to. e.g 5 to stop the reply all with a big attachment crashing the system. This happens when the jokes start flying around. Put a limit on the size of the mailbox from the start and limit the filetypes that can be attached.

[john]

OWA solution on Exchange 2003 for all. Very good solution and works well.

[Geoff]

Kids use LEA/RBC provided webmail atm. We've recently deployed Zimbra to staff (replacing Exchange) so we may be looking at moving kids onto Zimbra at some point.

[Gatt]

OWA solution on Exchange 2003 for all. Very good solution and works well.

 

Ditto here - Kids only have Internal Mail - nothing external.

Staff on LEA's main email network - first.last @ salford dot gov dot uk

[Jake]

Same here, Exchange 2007, internal mail only.

[CyberNerd]

we moved kids to zimbra, the web interface is for them to use (also works with stand alone email clients), it also hooks into Active Directory and exchange address lists. The advantage of zimbra for students is it was pretty easy to get content filtering working. virus and spam filteres are included by default and it cost nothing in licensing. We still use exchange for staff, staff can see students in the outlook address lists and vice versa.

[TechMonkey]

Ermmmm :oops: We don't. No student email. Head and NM have decided that unlike the Net, email just hasn't got the educaational need and is more of a pain.

[plock]

Our students have exchange accounts; they can only access this through OWA, no Outlook access.

 

We have SharePoint so we have linked the email system into the MySite.

 

External Email is allowed, but extensive monitoring is in place to ensure nothing inappropriate is being delivered from our domain.

[iatkinson]

OWA on Exchange 2003 for staff. Students have internal mail only through our frogbox but senior leadership have never allowed us to enable it. Doesn't integrate with AD either which is a PITA.

[localzuk]

Ermmmm :oops: We don't. No student email. Head and NM have decided that unlike the Net, email just hasn't got the educaational need and is more of a pain.

 

How do you comply with the requirements for teaching email in the curriculum then? What age kids?

[TechMonkey]

Secondary. We have on accoasion when asked allowed some dummy web mail accounts to be used to get screenshots for coursework. But it has never been a problem according to the teachers.

 

It all stems back to early days of DFES saying everychild must have email. The school did this and then found 90% of email was internal, about 85% of that internal mail was within class (so from one station to another in the same room, probably right next to each other) and a huge percentage was just bullying. Then DFES started flip flopping about what was required (every child must have one, every class must have one, then something else, then back to every child) and the head and NM decided that it wasn't a critical feature. Hasn't caused any problems though.

[BooBoo]

We moved away from RM EasyMail about two years ago to Exchange and OWA. Best mover we ever did.

 

A shortcut on the desktop logs them straight in to the Exchange server no asking for passwords. OWA for external access via a link from the website. We can import the school calendars into the pupils OWA calendar and have large mail boxes, typically 100mb plus we can search mail and disable mail boxes should we need to. Because it’s AD there's only one user name and password to remember.

 

Don't forget to use a backup like VERITAS that will backup the database, normal backups don't.

[elsiegee40]

We have a school domain 'mineheadmiddle.somerset.sch.uk' which, mail-wise, is served by the RM Easymail system. Kids get on with it ok. Personally I hate it but then thats me...

Like localzuk we have a domain school.co.uk and are served by RM EasyMail.

 

Kids from Years 3 to 6 all have webmail through this and so do all staff. Office staff use their EasyMail accounts through MS Outlook at school with the .pst folder being held on their home drive so that it's "portable"

 

I don't like EasyMail, but it's straightforward enough to sort out passwords and seems to work for us.

 

Actually we also have some gmail accounts (feeding into Outlook) which were set up as disaster management during the great RM server outage earlier this year - our web enquiries still go through that!

 

Lin

[john]

Our students have exchange accounts; they can only access this through OWA, no Outlook access.

 

We have SharePoint so we have linked the email system into the MySite.

 

External Email is allowed, but extensive monitoring is in place to ensure nothing inappropriate is being delivered from our domain.

 

How are you doing the Sharepoint Integration? I can add in the Exchagne moduley bit but when you put it in you have to code in a username and the usual %USERNAME% didn't work for me. I wanted to code the E-mail straight into a box on the front page of the Sharepoint so everytime anyone goes to the Intranet they get there email on it.

[plock]

How are you doing the Sharepoint Integration? I can add in the Exchagne moduley bit but when you put it in you have to code in a username and the usual %USERNAME% didn't work for me. I wanted to code the E-mail straight into a box on the front page of the Sharepoint so everytime anyone goes to the Intranet they get there email on it.

 

There are several ways you can do this; we use the exchange module on the 'MySite' area. The settings used are:

 

Exchange Folder Name: inbox/?cmd=contents

 

Mail Server Address: Internal or External address will work. External if you can access your SharePoint from any internet connection. Remember you will need the routing already setup for external access.

 

Mailbox: Your mailbox name, i.e. firstname.lastname

 

Ok, so another way you can do it, which you could use for the homepage of SharePoint. That's to use a 'Page Viewer Web Part' and just enter the address to your exchange.

 

Hope that helps!