The importance of email…

I remember being a young lad in high school and creating my first Hotmail account.  Note, this is back before Hotmail was owned by Microsoft, and there was much “cooler” at the time.  I maintained that address well into my college years until I forgot the password and could not get the account reset.

Now I maintain three email accounts, a work account, a personal account, and a throw-away account.  Yet this summer as I delved more into different types of social networking (like GetGlue & Twitter), I found myself checking my email less and less.  As the new school year starts I find myself questioning the importance of email.  Couldn’t most important information be passed on via wiki’s? Couldn’t student & parent contact be done via Twitter or the school friendly Edmodo?

It is because of these thoughts I have decided to try and deviate my classroom this year away from email. I am pushing for my building to use Edmodo as the main form of communication with students.  Backchanneling will also become the norm within my classroom using websites like todaysmeet.com.

This will probably take me at least a semester to get the kinks worked out and I am sure weeks of frustration, but I believe this should build a more open and productive classroom.  Please share any experiences you have had with anything I rambled on about or please point at any flaws in my late night thought process!