Usenet Newsgroups

Large WWW bulletin board where people of like interests post and read messages. There are over 20,000 different interest groups from arts to recipes. They are an exciting resource, but unless filtered are not ideal for classroom use. Because they are not moderated in most cases, unsavory subjects can come up unexpectedly.

Therefore if you plan to use them in class, it is a good idea to direct students to a particular Newsgroup.

Some groups of interest to teachers might be:

K12.ed.math
K12.ed.soc-studies
K12.ed.health-pe (for teachers of health and Physical education)
K12.ed.music
K12.ed.art
K12.ed.life-skills
K12.ed.special (for teachers of special needs students)
K12.chat.elementary (General bulletin board for youngsters, including keypal listings)
K12.chat.teacher
K12.lang.francais
Alt.teachers.lesson-p
Others are listed on P.100 in the text
Differences between Mailing List and Newsgroups:

• The subject matter(thread) in a Newsgroup is sorted according to subject and one can only read the messages one is interested in, whereas one receives all messages in a Discussion Group
• Because the postings are not moderated in a Newsgroup in most cases, one needs to be able to discern the authenticity of messages. In a Mailing List, there is usually a moderator to help with this as well as the members of the List usually correct one another much as in a live discussion group. This of course is something high school students ,especially, need to be able to do.

1. Choose Browse groups or put in your search string such as chemistry
2. Choose K12
3. Choose K12 Education
4. Choose subject area
5. Browse the list of articles and click on one that interests you
6. You may go back or forward to messages or you can post a response (be very careful what you say because that will be there forever for all the world to see)

• One can also try searching the topic on Search Engines such as Infoseek Ultra, Excite, and Lycos and click the Newsgroup option.

Chats

Real-time discussions held between students from around the world in virtual chat rooms. These can be exciting and fun for students and teachers. However, since they are not easily monitored, they have to be used with great caution. They can be of great benefit for teachers' professional development. For example, an online conference hosted by a university in Hawaii has a lounge where people enter and exit and discuss various topics with the people in the room. Every person has a nickname and is addressed by this name throughout the visit.

One place to begin a chat practice is at Yahoo Chat

Sign in as a new subscriber. Once you have your ID etc. you can enter a chat group and start reading and sending messages to the people in the room..

Try out some of the chat groups on P 92 in the text.

MOOs

Multi-user Object-oriented - are real time conversations with people around the globe somewhat like a conference call. Moos got their start as MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) which are an online version of the game Dungeons and Dragons. MOOs can have a more serious purpose such as distance education.

Teachers need to spend at least 15 hours familiarizing themselves with the MOO environment before they attempt to use them in a classroom setting.
A very good description and links to MOOs are found at Diversity University
http://www.bushnet.qld.edu.au/~jay/moo/

Try some MOOs on P. 94-95

After trying Newsgroups, MOOs, and chat groups, write a 1 page paper about the pros and cons of using these forms in the classroom  Give the addresses for a Newsgroup, MOO and chat you would recommend or not recommend for other teachers.

Due by Thursday, October 8, 1998

Please send this to me in the form of an e-mail attachment.

Additional Searching for Websites

Tip: Search for Education K12 on Netscape Netcenter