Engaging Readers on the L&L Group Page of the ISTE Community Ning
It’s been nearly a year since the staff of Learning & Leading with Technology magazine started a group on the ISTE community Ning to directly engage ISTE members with what they read in L&L. Our mission was to solicit responses for our Readers Respond and Point/Counterpoint sections, host contests, and glean ideas for articles and other content. We didn’t know what to expect. Our readers are very busy, and we knew we were competing with the many other social networking sites that have popped up. It was hard to predict if our members would sign up for yet another account requiring a user name and password.
We were cautiously optimistic when we got our first group member within 12 hours of creating our page. Over the months we continued to grow and, as of this writing, the L&L group is the largest on the ISTE Community Ning with 299 members. That’s a drop in the bucket when you consider we have more than 20,000 readers worldwide. But we are glass-half-full types over here, which means we are tickled that so many people have taken the time to weigh in on our discussion board and comment wall.
In the past month we’ve had a lot of activity, much of it from preservice teachers discussing articles and debating some of the very topics they are covering in class. We welcome their input as well as comments from all ed tech enthusiasts.
I wanted to share a few nuggets recently posted on the L&L group page and encourage you to take a look and, hopefully, add your voice to the conversation at www.iste-community.org/group/landl.
On the discussion forum Facebook vs. Face-to-Face, Cassie Miller wrote:
Students are indeed living in a world where face-to-face interaction must be fostered, but along with that they need to have Internet presence, responsibility, and networking skills. The Internet and the ability to effectively use sites such as Facebook is extremely important in today’s world, both socially and in a business sense. Because of this, I think it is important that as educators we address both forms of communication with our students.
Rachel Poynter responded:
Choosing just Internet or just face-to-face interaction is a disservice to our students, considering it is our job as educators to prepare them for the “real world.” I think it’s in everyone’s best interest to teach our students when and how to communicate through Facebook and face-to-face. Well-rounded, experienced students will be the most marketable when looking for jobs, and although we can not ensure their success, we can at least give them the means to learn how to communicate in various ways.
On the discussion forum Online Classes in High Schools, Jody Twining wrote:
I really like the idea of virtual classrooms. I personally think this mimics real-world encounters more than most classrooms do. Distance learners are forced to develop good time-management skills, and they learn to become more responsible for their own learning. I think that, done properly, a distance education can be just as beneficial as a classroom education.
Andrew Lusher commented:
This past summer I took my very first online course. It was a literature course, which made me nervous about not having the teacher and my peers right there to discuss meanings and interpretations in order to gain a deeper understanding of the texts. However, I must admit that it was quite possibly the best literature course I have taken in college (And that is saying a lot!). My instructor was very hands on. He was in almost daily communication with us either through e-mail or discussion board blogging. I found myself wanting to check the discussion board every chance I got. My peers were the same way-as seen through the feedback on the board.
Leave a Comment