Gmail Tips and Tricks

E-mail is simply the best. Within seconds, anyone can type up a message and it will be received and read on a computer, smart phone, or tablet! E-mail has changed the way teachers communicate with faculty, parents, and their students. Email communication is so easy, and Gmail makes it even better! At my own school, the faculty uses Outlook, but every opportunity I have, I will use Gmail. I am lucky to have 1:1 iPads in my school, so Gmail is readily available to all of my students. There are many different ways I use Gmail in my classroom.

Ways I use Gmail in the classroom:

• Sending out our homework planner daily
• Newsletters to parents
• Classroom reminders to students and parents
• Students will communicate with one another through Gmail

The first step is to make an account if you don't have one! Click here to set-up your very first Gmail account! Your life will be forever changed. 

One of my favorite things about Gmail is how easily it allows you to stay organized. On a typical day, between my work e-mail and personal account, I received 100+ e-mails a day. Important e-mails can easily get lost in the shuffle of all of the spam e-mails. I like to prevent important e-mails from getting lost, so I flag e-mails in different ways to help me organize my clutter filled inbox. Just like cleaning off my desk, organizing my e-mails makes me feel so much better! Below is a tutorial that will help you learn ways to flag e-mails. Also, Gmail allows you to organize your incoming e-mails into categories such as social, promotions, and primary. 

Here is an image of all the different flagging features you can use in Gmail!

Another feature I enjoy is the chat option. It makes communicating easier especially when you know there will be shorter messages to a recipient. Here is a step by step tutorial of how to start chatting with a contact of yours. 

Lastly, another feature of G-mail that I use daily is creating a contact group. This makes sending e-mails to parents, all students, and small groups easy. Rather than typing in every name, you can just create a group and type in the group name when you compose an e-mail. Here is a step-by-step guide of how to create a contact group. 

1. In the upper left hand corner - go to contacts. 

2. Once you are in contacts, click new group and give it a name. This will be on the left hand side of the page. 

 3. You will then want to add people to your contact group. The button will be on the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Once you type in the contact name, you will have your first person in the contact group. You can add as many people as you want into the contact group!

Here is another webpage that has many tips and hacks for using Gmail!