Creating Google Apps accounts for students without giving them email

If you want your students to have Google Apps accounts so they can use Google Docs and Google Calendar but you don't want to give them an email address -- or if they don't have an email address -- you can use a temporary email address to set up the account.

Here are your step by step directions for using the temporary email site Mailinator:

1. Head to docs.google.com and click "Create an account now"

2. Fill out all the information. For the email address, put whatever you want for the username as the email address. The only catch is that the email address must end in "@mailinator.com". For example, you could use "johnny12@mailinator.com". I would consider something like first name + graduation year + class period or something like that. The point is whatever you put as the email, the verification email will be sent to that Mailinator address.

I would un-check "Stay signed in" and "Enable Web History". Just two things that aren't worth messing with.

3. The next screen will tell you that a confirmation email has been sent to the address you used to create the account.

4. At that point, head over to www.Mailinator.com.  Put in the address you created for the Google Account and hit "GO." Just put the stuff you put before the @ sign.

5.  Click on "Google Email Verification." That's your confirmation email.

6. It'll ask you to type in the "Captcha" to make sure you're a spammer, a robot, or both.

 7. Click the link in the verification email and you're all set! Students can use the account you created to log into Google Docs -- for example, "studentexample@mailinator.com" -- but they can't use it to send email.

Repeat for each student and you're done.

If this doesn't make sense, please let me know in comments and I'll try to make it more clear.