For example:

Let us know if you’d like to chat about how to set it up or give it a try!

The problem with everyone using a single account is that you won’t be able to easily tell which person said what (I guess each commenter could add his/her name at beginning of each comment)… and each person won’t get their own notifications.

Two teachers at the presentation emailed me with the general question about how to deal with students not having their own email accounts, and my reply is below (kind of long and detailed, but hopefully helpful!).

— dan
/////////

Two other thoughts come to mind:

1. our new LTI tool
2. “Gmail trick”

Details:

currently working on, but I think that’s a promising approach. Do you use Moodle or Blackboard or any other LMS? If so, the LMS knows you’re the teacher and who the kids are, etc. The idea is that when any of you log
into your LMS you can have it (the LMS) authenticate you to our system and knows those roles automatically.

Having said that… our system uses email for a lot of internal
housekeeping:

a. letting students know when someone invites them to a document or group

b. notifying users when someone responds to them (or to a thread they’re in… users can control those Notification preferences).

c. non-LTI authentication (log-in) etc.

So… even if LTI authenticates OK, there would me some functionality
missing without an email address. But that bring up idea #2:

2. “Gmail trick”

I would not use your personal email for this, but you can take any Gmail
address:

[email protected]

and add the plus sign and a number (or letter??) to it like so:

[email protected]
[email protected]

NowComment treats all 3 email addresses above as distinct (e.g. for
account and login purposes), but Gmail will deliver all email addressed to
any of those addresses to the first address (without the +n).

So…. you as teacher could have the one Gmail address to generate all
the other (unlimited) other email addresses usable for students to log
in… but all the notification emails and other housekeeping would go to
your root address… including the initial validation email, so you’d have
to receive and validate at least all the initial registration emails.

Hopefully one of those two would be doable. And if you work with an LMS
then we’d love to have your kick the tires on our LTI tool when it’s ready
in about a week… our beta testers get extra TLC above and beyond
normal!!