Creating Student Accounts Using One Gmail Account

Image of blog email addressWhen you set up blogs with multiple users the comment notifications are only sent to the email address that was used to set up the blog.

So if you’ve set up student blogs with your student’s email address using Edublogs Blog & User Creator feature comment notifications will be sent to your student. This is a problem if you wanted all comments sent to you for moderation.

While you can change the email address in blog settings (Settings > General) a simpler solution is to set up the student blogs using one Gmail account.

Using Gmail To Create Student Accounts

Gmail (or Google Mail) is Google’s free web email service with tons of storage space and lots of great features e.g. ability to easy search mail messages, threaded messages, built in chat.  Create your gmail account here.  I recommend choosing a name that people can identify easily as being you e.g. mine is my name with the s missing from the end of waters.

Educators can use one Gmail account to set up student blogs or sign up for different online services using gmail’s support of plus addressing. How this works is simple! Gmails ignores anything in the first half of an email address after a plus sign so if you create each email with the format [email protected] all emails will be sent to the inbox of [email protected]. You can use both text and numbers in the student names.

Image of using gmail to create blogs

FINAL THOUGHTS

Remember when using Edublogs Blog & User Creator feature to create student blogs the students are automatically added as Administrators (here is an explanation of the different roles you can assign users).  Also don’t forget to change selection to Yes in the Add Admin field if you wanted to add yourself as co administrator when creating the student blogs.

NOTE: to have access to the Edublogs Blog & User Creator for batch creating 15 blogs at a time you need to be an Edublogs supporter.

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65 thoughts on “Creating Student Accounts Using One Gmail Account

  1. @Ines You need to first set up their username before you can Add them as users. Have you created their username? Have you click on the kitchen sink button? I use FireFox which corrects my spelling for me.

  2. Hi Sue,
    I’m sorry, but I’m having the same issue than @Mizzb and @Maybellesmom.
    As student blogging competition is about to start, I’m trying to add my students as authors to our class blog, at http://inpi.edublogs.org
    I’m doing it using my gmail adress plus + the student’s [email protected]. I’m adding these emails where it is written: Add Users.
    But I keep receiving the message that these emails don’t exist!
    (Sue, my computer has been reset, I don’t remember how to enable a spelling corrector in my blog: could you also help me with this?)
    Thank you!
    Ines

  3. I am also trying to use this gmail trick. I have already set up separate class blogs and want to add my students using the one gmail address.

    Just like maybellesmom when I try to set up a new user with the [email protected] it says that email address does not exist. What am I doing wrong?

    Thank you for your help in advance! 🙂

  4. I am trying to invite all my students to use one blog (and not all of them have email) – can I still use this gmail trick?

  5. Hello – just setting up my first blog for students to use for September. I set up the gmail account and then tried to add users by adding the +1 to the original

    Example: [email protected] but when I submit it it says the email does not exist. I also went and changed my email to this gmail account in the settings but still no go. Can anyone help me with what I am doing wrong?

  6. Sue I have a problem. I set up 15 student blogs using gmail but the online form didn’t ask for passwords so all the students can access each other’s blogs. When the front page comes up clicking on login takes you straight to the dashboard instead of asking for a password. Is there anyway I can password protect each student’s blog? I am administrator on them all.

    Beverley

  7. This gmail hack has worked brilliantly for me this year at http://56c2008.edublogs.org. It works for some other sites too -I used it last week to get all of my kids onto our pbwiki. All of them can now log on with their own username and password, but I get all the emails notifying changes and they still don’t need their own email address to participate!

  8. @Art If you wanted students to be able to use the email they would need to create their own gmail or email account because this method wouldn’t work. What you could do is use this to create the accounts and once they are used to using their blogs they could change to their own email address.

    1. Every student in our school has their own student email, which is connected to gmail, but the end is like this “@ja.nl”

  9. Question for you Sue…these email addresses are good for a specific class, but have you given any thought about using this as an “address” the student can carry with them from year to year?

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