Currently, our OKCPS Gmail permissions are:
STAFF: can send emails within the OKCPS Domain, but not receive.
STUDENTS (secondary): can send and receive emails within the OKCPS Domain.
That being said, check out Yet Another Mail Merge or YAMM. This Google Sheets add-on allows you (and/or your students) to send personalized email messages in Gmail to students, administrators, other teachers, etc. by "email merging" a spreadsheet of data (similar to the way one might do a mail merge using an Excel spreadsheet and a Word document), except in this case one would use Google Sheets and Gmail!
So how might a teacher use YAMM? Let's say a teacher wants to send a standardized email message to all students with differentiated information (e.g., grades, notes, comments, group assignments, etc.) specific to each students, this would be a way to do so!
Lastly and yet most importantly, this post assumes that you have been (and will continue to) teach digital citizenship to your students, and in particular, email etiquette. Email has been around for quite some time now and I do not foresee it completely going away by the time our current PK students graduate...but who knows what the future of technological innovations may bring about? For now, let's err on the side of caution and continue to teach our students to be good and responsible users of electronic communications, just in case.
