Email Connectivity
Email obviously supports one to one connectivity, and also supports one-to-many through use of mailing lists or contact groups.
- Try setting up a contact group with a few of your classmates and send out a test message.
Email Collaboration
If we define online collaboration as working together towards a single objective through the use of software running on a network, email can certainly support collaborative project work.
Many email systems have features that allow threading of messages in a similar manner to newsgroups. This means that when you reply to a group mail the original message has your reply (and others' replies) linked to it.
- Google Mail has this feature - if you want to see this in action, why don't a few of you set up a contact group and send out a test message to which you each send a reply?
Email Interactivity
At first you might think that email is not interactive at all. However, consider some emails you have received containing hyperlinks to web sites, aren't these examples of interactive emails? So I think that traditionally emails are not interactive, but they do have some features that allow a degree of interactivity.
- Can you think of any other examples of interactivity within an email?
