OFFTOPIC Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] Parallel thinking - from the Admin guy

[Kevork Krozian]

Hi Mark ( the other one - Scott ) ,

 
 You make a good point. We could also have photos of participants and more.  However ......

 It seems people are much more comfortable with checking emails than checking a forum. I know the more tech savvy among us are happy with either, but the majority of users (teachers) have to make an effort to log into a separate web site to be part of a community. The mailbox they "own" seems more personal than the "other" third party web site they need to get onto to be part of a community. Equally, we could have chat lines but generally speaking do not archive these so some great ideas and suggestions would fall through the cracks....
 
As a further example of "If you don't change direction, you will probably end up where you are heading" I set up a newsgroup gateway for each mailing list many years ago so subscribers could just log on with their news reader and see ONLY emails relevant to that list and no other and still post and participate and follow threads much more easily ( which news clients lend themselves to more so than email clients) and suppress email delivery so the mailbox is not used any more for receipt of list emails. Repeat for each newsgroup to connect to each list.  The uptake (anecdotally) was less than 1%.  Maybe the lesson is, if you give people an option they will go with what they know ...

 The other issue is one of control and maintenance. As you may notice Edulists tries to run itself with as little "control" as possible. The task of "controlling" 80 plus lists with 1000 messages a month and more is not one a full time teacher with 2 young children apart from his other hobbies has the luxury of carrying out. Maintenance is hard enough when people can't email to a list ( maybe their email has changed from fred at myschool.vic.edu.au to fred at mail.myschool.vic.edu.au ) or a myriad of other problems. These are all off list and not seen. This , quite apart from requests for advice on how to teach or implement a networking solution or programming or cisco or debugging code and on and on and on ..............
 
 Having said all of that, I might still work on a forum as a development that I can unveil when and if we are ready for the move .....

 Nice idea .....

 To reiterate our IT Apps moderator request from Mark ( the first one - Kelly ) can we please close off the thread or continue on the offtopic list at offtopic at edulists.com.au 


Kind Regards








Kevork Krozian
IT Manager , Forest Hill College
k.krozian at fhc.vic.edu.au
http://www.fhc.vic.edu.au
Mobile: 0419 356 034

>>> Mark Scott <msc at luther.vic.edu.au> 20/06/2008 9:30 am >>>

It would be nice if you could lock a thread.

Have you ever thought about setting these mailing lists up as a forum?

It would give you a whole lot more control and a chance to include some banner ads to help recuperate some of the costs.

Mark Scott
"If you don't change direction, you will probably end up where you are heading." Sara Felder



-----Original Message-----
From: itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Mark Kelly
Sent: Friday, 20 June 2008 9:13 AM
To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: OFFTOPIC Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] Parallel thinking

Please let this thread end.

--
Mark Kelly
Moderator: IT Applications Mailing List


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IT Applications Mailing List kindly supported by
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http://www.vitta.org.au  - VITTA Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association Inc