[K12OSN] Teacher Forums

[John Ingleby]

> Eric Harrison wrote:
> 
> 
> > As I've stated in the past, I'd really rather not try to split up
> > the existing community. A mixture of technical and non-technical
> > people is what has got us this far.
> > 
> > On the other hand, I can see the great value in a "users" list for
> > those "how do I make an openoffice template" type of questions. I
> > understand that John EndUser would be confused or intimidated by
> > the questions asked by Jane SysAdmin.
> > 
> > 
> > If we do choose to setup a new forum, I'd like it to have as much
> > cross-pollination as possible with this forum.
> > 
> > So I guess I vote for a. A new, teacher focused mailman list
> > 
> > -Eric

We worried about this same issue for www.schoolforge.org.uk, which is a
wiki supporting a mainly UK-based community from several mailing lists,
including K12LTSP. I think that much valuable knowledge in the emails
should be collected somewhere that's web-accessible, but better
organised than the traditional list archive.

One solution is a mail-to-news gateway, such as Gmane www.gmane.org ,
which captures the correspondence in a mailing list and turns it into
threaded discussions (i.e. a newsgroup), providing a really superb
archive.

However, we haven't yet hit on a solution that appeals to the teaching
community, where the need is greatest now that our FLOSS tools are so
superb.

John Ingleby
************
Webmaster - www.schoolforge.org.uk