What role for teacher discussions?
brian_drayton@TERC.EDU
Mon, 28 Jul 1997 07:39:55 -0400
I have been part of several teacher discussion projects, and I have real questions about the niche that they serve. Ann Koufman mentions that some people feel inhibited about posting to an anonymous crowd, and of course a net conversation tends to work best if there is a core of people who have talked in person. Still, the network behavior I have seen suggests that even allowing for some people's technical or logistical barriers, the role of a network discussion is not at all obvious. I assume this means that it really serves more than one purpose, and therefore most often will serve best if it is rooted in a group that sees itself as a community already. Community organizing is a tough process, involving the sharing of news, the building of a sense of shared goals and allegiances, and the buildingof individual relationships and commitments within that ideological framework. So network commmunity building should include a rather large component of listening and small-scale convers
ations, on the part of p
eople who feel it their task to nurture the community itself. Most people signing on to a net discussion come to take advantage of services, not to build a community per se. This has to be taken into account when designing a network, and when assessing its success. What are the kinds of participation seen in professional groups like NSTA or AAPT, and what proportion of the total membership participates in each way?
-- Brian Drayton, TERC (and TEECH)
(brian_drayton@terc.edu)
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