Skyline College received two e-mails with instructions on how to activate their new my.smccd.edu accounts.

Students were provided with a username which generally consisted of their first initial and their last name and a password that cannot be changed for security reasons.

According to Erik Raznick, director of information technology services at SMCCD, some students had some confusion trying to access their new accounts.

“Anytime you introduce new technology it takes time for people to learn how to use it,” Raznick said.

The new e-mail has been in use for a little over three weeks and some 3,000 students from the various schools in the district have already accessed their accounts. According to district officials that is a very positive turnout and things seem to be working out with the new e-mail.

Many students want to know how to forward their new account to an existing e-mail account. According to Raznick this is done very easily and help information can be found on how to do this at my.smccd.edu.

“I don’t like the new e-mail and I forwarded it to my other address,” Skyline student, Kim Ison, 19 said. “I think it is inconvenient to check more than one e-mail address.”

Even though many students feel it is a hassle to have more than one e-mail address, they think it is nice to be able to open their e-mail and not be bombarded with junk mail.

“Even though I don’t have junk mail, which is nice, I just forget to open it to check to see if I have new messages,” Skyline student Marie Manalatas, 16, said.

In addition to the mail feature provided by my.smccd.edu, Shelly Hausman, Communications Manager of Marketing and Public Relations at Skyline College, believes students will enjoy the Google applications. Some of the applications that will be provided with the e-mail include: Google Docs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations and Google Calendar.

With the registration period upon students, they can take advantage of the waitlist functionality in WebSMART and receive e-mails to their Google accounts when a spot opens up. Raznick says it is important that students remember e-mail messages will only be sent to the new my.smccd.edu accounts.

If students are still having trouble accessing their accounts at this time, they should read the information pages at my.smccd.edu. There is also a new tab in WebSMART called “Student E-mail” with information regarding information on how to access their account. If students go through those steps and are still stuck, they can request help by clicking on the support button of the my.smccd.edu website.

It is important that students access and setup their new e-mail accounts as soon as possible because “it will be easy to communicate with faculty and classmates,” Hausman said.