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REFLECTION
I have been a member of the National Council of Teachers of English for a few years and
have always received their weekly INBOX email, which connects me to various news articles and research articles not necessarily
published by NCTE. I have always enjoyed this type of communication because it allows me to just review what I am interested
in and does not necessarily crowd my inbox. Until I started exploring the idea behind a listserv, though, I did not
realize that I was already participating in one.
In order to join a more active listserv, I made a list of issues that were important
and interesting to me. Last semester, I had done some research on the benefits of small schools and learning communities
and have been wanting to know more about that issue. I decided to check out the website for the small
schools movement, www.essentialschools.org, and was excited to find that they had a quick and easy to find link to joining their online discussion.
I quickly joined this group, which is a Yahoo group. By the end of my first day
as a member, I had already received 7 articles from across the country discussing the importance of small schools or smalle
learning communities. I have stayed a member of this group and find myself reading every single article that lands in my inbox
because they are very specific to the actual listserv topic. I've been very impressed with this groups' ability to weed out
articles that are off topic. Mostly articles are mailed out, although some responses and questions do land in my inbox.
For most of the discussion you have to go to the Yahoo group site. One thing I am noticing about this group is that
there is not a lot of debating going on. People seem to be using the group to ask questions or to post other articles
that don't show up on the list. To be honest, I like this hidden benefit, because it enables me to form my own conclusions
about the research articles and newspaper articles I am reading on the topic.
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