Email - how does it work?

As a UK-based Year Three teacher, I found it difficult to teach the ICT Unit 3e (Email) without going through the process of having children register with external email addresses.

I felt strongly (also as a parent) that 7-year olds should not have full access to email.

I therefore put this system together. It is restricted to one server and all the 'communication' happens within that server - so there is no external access and no real email addresses. Children can also only communicate with others in their class or in a teacher-approved joint collaborative class. It is therefore 100% secure, but a reasonable simulation of email in practice.