E-mail is an effective and inexpensive way of keeping in touch with people - far quicker than posting a letter, and far cheaper than a long distance call. If I want to send an e-mail to someone in Australia it arrives almost as soon as I've sent it yet at the cost of short local rate phone call.

To send or receive e-mail you need first to set up your own e-mail address which is unique and specific to you. If you have an internet enabled computer at home this can be done through your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or otherwise you can use a free e-mail account that you can use on any computer. Amongst the most popular providers of these of these type of e-mail addresses are MSN Hotmail and Yahoo.

Typically an e-mail address consists of two parts: your name and the domain name e.g. JohnSmith@hotmail.com

So in this example your name is 'JohnSmith' and the domain name is hotmail.com

You can choose what you want your name at the beginning to be, but don't be too disappointed if it turns out that someone else is already using it as there is probably more than one 'JohnSmith' in the world. When choosing a name, if your choice has already been taken by somebody else the registration webpage will usually provide an alternative for you.

The domain name is determined by the company that you are registering your e-mail account with e.g. Hotmail.com , Yahoo.com, lycos.co.uk etc.

You don't have to pay any money to register this type of e-mail account, and once set up it will allow you to send and receive e-mails. You only pay for the time that you are using the internet. This e-mail account will function like a postbox, so that mail for you will wait there until you come in to read it.

To take advantage of many of the websites on the internet you will need your own individual e-mail address in order to register.
As part of sessions people could be encouraged to set up their own e-mail address and to send an e-mail to someone else in order to find out how e-mail works.

Registering for your free E-mail address

When you visit the homepage for your E-mail provider you will usually see an option to register a new account. At hotmail.com this option is called ‘New account sign up’.

This usually entails filling in a few personal details. These help the provider know a little more about you and help them keep the accounts more secure. Any information recorded by them will be kept confidential and cannot be disclosed to other parties, so that your details remain private.

Once you have completed these details online you will have to choose your e-mail address. This address is unique and will act as your private mailbox, so try to choose something which you think helps identify you. This could be your name, but if someone else shares your name they might have already taken that address. If the address you choose has already been taken by someone else the system will tell you and ask you to choose another address. They will usually make a suggestion as to addresses which are still free so that you can if you wish take one of those suggested or try making up something yourself.

For others to contact you all they need to do is to send their message to your e-mail address. This is as simple as typing your address in when they write their message online. Because your address is unique it will come straight to you.
If you give you e-mail address to friends and family they can easily write messages and send them to you. Ensure however that you don't give your e-mail address out to anyone you don't want to contact you as it can get annoying to trawl through a box full of junk mail and adverts!

Before you are finished setting up your e-mail address you will need to choose a password for it. This ensures that you and you alone are able to access your messages, so choose something you will remember. When you log in to check your mail, or to write a message you will be asked to type in your e-mail address and your password beforehand. This helps keep your account private and secure.

It is best not to choose something too obvious like 'password' as it is too easy for other people to guess. Ensure that you keep your password private so no-one can gain access to your messages without your consent.