Jeffrey M. Johnson
TRED 701
December 4, 2000
Following is a brief report on my experience with listservs this semester. For each of the four listservs that I successfully subscribed to, there is a brief summary. These sections are followed by a wrap up discussion at the end.
This listserv covers the rather broad topic of "discussion group on math in education." I subscribed on September 26 and have received 10 messages so far. One was from a new teacher soliciting information about the listserv. Three were concerned with an online survey on teacher job satisfaction. The other six were related to job openings and postings. Unfortunately, none of the messages were relevant or useful to me. The job postings may someday be useful, but the nature of the Internet means that they are typically from far off places (e.g. California and Australia). That having been said, however, I would still recommend this listserv to new math teachers. It does not flood members with too many messages and it appears to be a place where one could post questions about math education and get a decent number of replies (I base this assumption on the messages related to the job satisfaction survey - it looks like that person got a good response from listserv participants).
This is a listserv about the use of media and technology in education. It has a slightly narrower topic than the previous listserv, but the number of messages has been far higher. I subscribed on October 4 and have received 28 messages so far. It has become obvious that the listserv is meant primarily to serve teachers in Canada. Most of the messages deal with the logistics of getting technology into the classroom (e.g. procedures and legislation related to purchasing). Unfortunately, they are specific to Canada's school systems. Other messages include conference announcements, calls for papers, and job postings. Again, all of these are in Canada. There have been a few general solicitations for information about use of technology, however, and it appears that listserv members responded to them. For this reason, I would tentatively recommend this listserv to teachers interested in applying new technological hardware in their classrooms. The caveat I would include, however, is that members have to be willing to weed through a large number of irrelevant messages to get any value out of the listserv.
This listserv deals with academic software development. Its focus is narrower than both of the previous listservs. It is also of great interest to me. I assume that the listserv would have some interesting information about the use of academic software as well. Unfortunately, since subscribing on October 4, I have received no messages.
I was very hopeful about this listserv. Its topic is the Coalition of Essential Schools. I know a little about the Coalition from the "Horace" books by Theodore Sizer, and I am very interested in learning more. I subscribed to the listserv on September 25, but did not get added to the list until November 21. I have not received any messages yet.
Overall, the listserv investigation has been a useful one for me. If there is one thing that I have learned, it is that one has to be willing to endure some pain to get any value out of listservs. From the discussion above, it is apparent that in a two month period, I had a success rate of 50% in getting any responses at all from listservs. What is not apparent is that I attempted to subscribe to four other listservs as well. For one reason or another, I was never added to those listservs. Even on the listservs that I liked, I had to weed through a lot of messages that were irrelevant to me. I must add, however, that the messages that were irrelevant to me were not irrelevant to other people. To the credit of the listserv members, all of the messages belonged in the listserv (no dirty jokes or e-mails mistakenly sent to everyone instead of one member).
In terms of what my students could learn from listservs, I have concluded that the teacher should act as an intermediary if the students are to have any interaction with them at all. The time and patience required to deal with listservs is something that I would not require of my students. The payoff for the investment is not great enough. To help students interact with the World Wide Web, I would use targeted searches and create WebQuests. Similarly, I would need to provide a comparable level of scaffolding if I were to use listservs in the classroom.
In summary, then, listservs provide an interesting parallel to the World Wide Web. There is a lot of chaff to separate out from the wheat, but for someone with the time, patience, and perseverance, participation in listservs is a useful process.