GRAPHIC DESIGN: "The Professional E-mail"

BACKGROUND: Many High School students have email addresses, but not many are appropriate for use in professional or business settings. In today's society, where so much of our communication, especially job applications, college and scholarship applications are done by computer, everyone needs a strong and solid "Professional Email Address."

THE ASSIGNMENT: This is a very simple assignment. Students will log on to an online email server such as Yahoo or Gmail and create an "Professional Looking Email Address." Then, the student will log on to their new email and send an email to Mr. B. When Mr. B. receives the email (properly professionally named), he will award 50 points to the student.

THE SITES: You can use any online email service you wish, but I highly recommend using either:

Click on the "Sign Up" or "Create New Account" icons and follow the onscreen instructions for creating a new email account.

ALREADY HAVE A PROFESSIONAL EMAIL ADDRESS?: Woohoo! you can skip right to the "Completing The Assignment" part. HOWEVER, your email address MUST follow the rules laid out in the naming section or you will NOT receive any credit!

NAMING YOUR EMAIL: A professional email address does not contain any fun or goofy words or phrases. It will primarily be a combination of your first and last names or initials and last name. Some acceptable professional email choices for Mr. B. would be:

  • pburkhard@email.com
  • paburkhard@email.com
  • paul.burkhard@email.com
  • burkhardp@email.com
  • pburk@email.com

PLEASE NOTE: On the Yahoo.com Email site, they also let you check for email names on two other Yahoo servers, ymail.com and rocketmail.com. To access these, click on the dropdown box where the username request box is.

If at all possible, try to create your email without using numbers. On some full email servers, it will be tough to get your name, despite all your efforts, if this is the case, try the other server and see if they have your name free.

COMPLETING THE ASSIGNMENT: Once you have your new email address all lined up, log in and check your email. Chances are you will have a "Welcome" email from your service. Now, send an email to Mr. B. His email address is:

pburkhard@weldre9.k12.co.us

Include a subject line like "Here is my email!" When I receive it, I will give you 50 points!