Suggestions for Posting on Online Forums

Pedagogy of Writing E-mail Messages

E-mail is a tool that teachers and students use to share information with each other. The writing process is most successful when they write from the deep knowledge of their own rich cultural, community and school learning experiences. The writing process includes:

• Conversations taking place among the whole class, in small groups, or in individual teacher or student peer conferences about the experiences they wish to share online. Discussing a topic before putting it in print facilitates clarification of ideas and the building of rich descriptive words in a collaborative social dialogue before the actual writing takes place.
  
  
• The first draft of the e-mail message focuses on content ideas and then on organization of ideas, on sentence syntax, and on spelling. The first draft can be typed on the computer using a word processing program.
  
  
• The initial draft will then be shared with someone else through writing conferences with student peers and/or teachers. The author or another person can read the draft aloud with the purpose of "hearing" how the text reads. The conferencing process is an important time for clarifying meanings and talking together about the ways words could make the text more descriptive. When sending e-mails, it is critically important to understand that you are sending language across diverse cultural contexts and without the prior opportunity to know one another face-to-face. Careful attention needs to be given to define vocabulary indigenous to a culture or context.

The following comes from the Teaching.com website. Although it refers to replying to e-mail, the affirmative behaviors it contains are applicable to forum postings.

Mailing List Etiquette

The following tips can help you communicate with your IECC (Intercultural Email Classroom Connections) partner(s) in ways that increase civility, dignity and the psychological sense of community.

• Always respond to those who send messages to you, even if you only have time to write a brief "thanks for the e-mail" response.
• Try to use the name of the person to whom you are writing with frequency, as a sign so that your partner knows that you are writing to her/him in particular. It makes comments seem more personal.
• Try to use words and language that are familiar to your partner, as a sign that both of you are on equal footing. If you use language that is over their head or that is unfamiliar, it may make your partner feel "inadequate."
• Try to listen for and talk about common experiences you may share with your partner. This will help establish a common ground to connect you.
• Try to paraphrase the comments of your partners and to refer to things they said earlier. This helps your partner know that you are really listening to them.
• Try to ask your partner for their help, advice, opinion, or thoughts. These are signs that you respect something about your partner. It can signal to your partner that you took the time to think about them in particular as being able to contribute something valuable to you.
• Acknowledge the things that your partner said that were especially good, helpful or valuable in some way, as a signal that he or she is appreciated.
• Try occasionally to use the particular words or ideas that your partner used first (giving them credit for saying them of course) as a sign that they are truly making a difference. When you tell them that something they said made you think, then they know that you listened carefully enough to what they had to say to relate it to your own life.
• Try to name the emotions you are feeling as you read what your partner wrote. This can help them understand the immediate impact of what they had to say.
• Try to be open about your feelings with your e-mail partner. When you are open it lets them trust you more and feel that you have a stronger link with each other.
  

Communicating on Online Forums

• Try to describe the essence of your message in the subject line. And if you are responding to a message, do not change the subject line.
  
  
• Try to be as brief as possible in your message and write the most important things in the first paragraph. You may be writing in a language that is not the native language of those reading your message. So it is very helpful for others to be able to get a sense of your message in the first few sentences if possible.
  
  
• Some subscribers to the forums use dial-up access and pay for telephone time (and sometimes for kilobytes too). For them, huge files mean huge telephone bills. Sometimes they can't even get messages if they are too big. In addition, don't quote the whole message that you are responding to, quote only pieces that you comment on. Otherwise, if several people respond to a message, and include it and previous messages in a quote, messages become huge.
  
  
• Limit the number of attachments you post on the forums. They can be too big for those who pay for dial-up access. In addition, they most often do not translate over the many systems across iEARN and many arrive as garbage.
  
  
• Try to configure your mailing software so that it sends out only plain text and no attachments of encoded word documents and html files. (e.g. Microsoft Outlook Express by default is set so that it sends out not only plain text, but also an encoded word version of the same text or an html version, that doubles the size of messages.) If you want to share with all subscribers something that is big but valuable (a Word document, a jpeg picture etc.) just send a note to the forum and ask people if they want to get it by e-mail, then email it to them individually. Or, place your document on the web for everybody to see.
  
• Do not post chain letters or any commercial advertisements to the forums.

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