Gmail tabs are a new way of organising your mail into tabs which sit at the top of your page.
Whilst email is not often seen as directly related to learning, email is a huge part of what we do in school.
A couple of weeks ago Google released the first of it’s major updates as they head towards a completely redesigned Gmail experience.
IS IT WORTH TURNING ON GMAIL TABS FOR YOUR STUDENTS?
In my opinion, the short answer is not yet.
The main reason being, at present your students can’t change the label names or add new labels to suit their needs. I’m told that this feature is coming, but I’m not sure how far away that is.
Your students can drag emails into the different tabs and use them despite of the tab names. For example your students could use the promotions tab for their comment notifications in Docs, but this might be more effort than it’s worth.
One helpful feature is that if you drag an email into a tab you are asked if you would like to do this for all future emails from that sender.
IS IT WORTH TURNING ON GMAIL TABS FOR YOUR STAFF?
The answer is, it depends.
If you have teachers who are active on social media, subscribe to blog posts etc, then the new Gmail tabs might prove handy as you can separate your work related emails from your updates.
You could do this already using filters, labels, and priority inbox but the Gmail tab feature saves a lot of scrolling. Teachers can also use the Gmail tabs in the same way as I suggested for students.
If you are interested in trying the Gmail tabs feature there is an easy to follow guide over at the cnet website.
Here is a short video demonstrating the Gmail tab feature
Let me know in the comment section how you are using Gmail tabs and whether or not you like the feature.
