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Online Forums

It's our experience that forums or discussion rooms are the most effective way to undertake educational projects on-line because:

  • messages don't fill mailboxes like listservs
  • they are not real-time, so they are easy to arrange in the classroom schedule and in a global network
  • they allow for a "public" way of interaction (in contrast to e-mail which is private) so participants can see the interaction and know that a discussion is underway
  • participants can enter late and still not miss any of the discussion
  • "threads" or topics can be used to focus discussions on specific questions or issues
  • there is a record of the discussions/actions, making it easier to produce the final product
  • people with access only to e-mail can participate by being subscribed to them, rather than be excluded or marginalized
Points to emphasize about writing for forums:
  • Preparation and transmission. Preparation and transmission should be seen as two separate tasks. Preparing the transmissions, researching and creating material to be transmitted, is a very important part of the process.
  • Student feedback. Students will be writing with real purpose for a very real audience. The presence of this audience provides an incentive for students to produce the most effective communication possible. You may want to incorporate a feedback process prior to transmission, where students have the opportunity to comment on each others work and then revise accordingly before they actually post their messages to the iEARN newsgroups.
  • Responsibility: It is important to emphasize to both teachers and students that iEARN is first and foremost a human network, and that when they post messages to the iEARN newsgroups, they are communicating in the context of a global community. Thus, special care should be taken to ensure that language is cross-cultural and appropriate for a diverse audience. And, it is the responsibility of each school to ensure that students' writings are thoughtful and respectful of others.

    • For a Tutorial on using iEARN's WWW-based forums, click here.

    (This Tutorial Covers:

    1. Entering and editing your personal "My iEARN Page" in the iEARN database (your password comes from here)
    2. Registration to participate in the WWW-based forums
    3. Posting responses to existing topics in discussion forums
    4. Posting new discussion topics
    5. Bookmarking Forums and Subscribing to specific discussions
    6. Using the "Search" utility)

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