Email has become a very important means of communication and because of this, the department has improved the service we use for student email accounts. Every NSW Public School student now has access to a Gmail email account. We found this system to provide a better service for our students, and it is much easier for students to operate.

So what does this mean for your child?

• Every student has around 7GB of storage with their account. This means your child can easily send themselves work between school and other computers. This includes work that might need a lot of storage space, such as presentations, video, audio or illustrated projects.
• Messages can be given different labels to help keep emails organised. For example, you child might label the one message with a subject, assignment topic, name of teacher, names of other students, date due, or any other label. This is much more flexible than choosing one folder for each message, as in the previous email system.
• If organising messages with labels doesn't help to find the message a student is looking for, your child can do a message search quickly and efficiently through Google search.
• Your child can create their own contact lists, using other students' Gmail addresses, or external email addresses, such as your email address.
• Virus and spam checking is very thorough.
• The new system is easy to use.

For more about the benefits and protection that your child has when using their NSW DET email address, take a look at: www.schools.nsw.edu.au/adminsupport/schtechnologies/internet/index.php

• Plenty of space—the mailbox capacity is almost 7GB and growing.
• Larger message sizes—messages up to 20MB can be sent or received.
• Message conversations are stacked like a deck of cards for easy viewing. 
• Message labels can be created and assigned to messages for easy grouping and better organisation. 
• Personal archive messages can be moved in and out of an archive to keep the inbox uncluttered. 
• Easy searching—the well known Google search engine allows fast searching for email.
• Great spam protection uses the highly effective Google anti-spam software.

Your child's school will have given details to your child on how to log in and where to find their student email. If they are unsure, get them to ask their teacher.

If you have any questions about the student's email system, I'm happy to answer them. Please use the comment form below.