the blog-forum concept

Why a blog?

We are experimenting with our forums. We have looked at a number of options and have not yet found a perfect solution. We have tried to find a balance between security/privacy and ease of use. We want the forum to be as open as possible so we do not want people to get bogged down with user names and passwords and links that do not work. But we recognize that not everybody is comfortable thinking out loud in an open forum. We are hoping that the option of posting anonymously will help.

Up until now we have used a list serve at NALD (thanks so much!). They worked really well and people wrote interesting, insightful and inspiring things.

Unfortunately, on list serves following threads and creating threads can be confusing. We want people to be able to follow threads and thread their responses easily. We think that the blog structure will work work well.

Also, on list serves, once the discussion is over it is very difficult to find that interesting, insightful and inspiring post. You have to remember the name of the thread or who said. That can be a challenge six months later. We think that the blog will create an easily accessible, searchable archive. On a blog we can tag the posts so people can find them by searching, by title, by date or by index.

Last but not least...

We think that blogs can be a great tool for literacy workers who want to communicate with each other, with folks outside the field, and with folks who affect or are affected by our work. We, and many others, are looking at how blogs may be an interesting online learning and communication tool for people in our programs. We hope that for those of you new to blogging, this forum will be a supportive learning and experimenting environment.

Very Important! Whether you post or not, please help us out and do our evaluation survey. We need to know how this forum worked for people.

Any questions? Please post a comment or contact me by email ~ literaciespublisher (at) gmail (dot) com.

how to participate

Read.

Post comments.

Create posts.

Very Important! Whether you post or not, please help us out and do our evaluation survey. We need to know how this forum worked for people.

reading

There are four ways to read the forum and the comments:

Obvious Pobvious: Visit the blog each day. This is the easiest way but we often forget. People in time-limited forums often find that by the time they have added checking the forum to their routine, it is over :-(

Easy Peasey: Subscribe in a reader.
Click on the link in the sidebar.

Easier Peasier: Bookmark at a social bookmarking site.
Click on the link in the sidebar.

Easiest Peasiest: Subscribe by email.
Click on the link in the sidebar.

commenting in the forum

You can comment on any post. Please do!

For the Blogger instructions on how to post a comment, please click on the 'how to add a comment' link in the sidebar to your right.

This is a public forum and is open to everyone.

Blogger gives you the option of what identity to use.
Warning: Sign in before you comment or save your comment before you sign in because you will lose it.

If you have a Google account and are okay with identifying yourself, you can use that.

If you do not have a Google account you can set one up very easily using any email address (it does not have to be a gmail account).

If you do not want to set up ANOTHER account, choose anonymous. You can sign your name at the bottom of your comment.

Anonymity: If you want to post anonymously, that is fine. We understand that some literacy workers worry about how funders and managers may react to their comments. Or that sometimes we do not want our words to follow us around forever. This forum is a place where we can 'think out loud'. The forum discussion will close in two weeks but the posts and comments will remain accessible for the life of Literacies (and beyond?).

If you post something and want to change it later, you can delete your own comments and add a new, revised version. But we would prefer if you leave the old version and add a new comment telling us how your thinking is evolving. Figuring this stuff our is a process. Learning about how we all figure stuff out is just as important as learning about what we all think.

Very Important! Whether you sign your name or not, please tell us where you are working now ~ location and type of work you do ~ that will help us understand the context for your comments and get a sense of who is here.

Any questions? Please post a comment or contact me by email ~ literaciespublisher (at) gmail (dot) com.

starting a thread

If you want to start a new topic of discussion or if that teeny tiny box just will not hold all your interesting, insightful, and inspiring ideas you can create your own post.

There are two ways to do this.

• Easy Peasey: Send an email to literaciespublisher (at) gmail (dot) com and I can sign you up as a co-author or send you the user name and password for the literacies guest. Then you can log in and create your post. If you are new to blogging, I can offer you over-the-phone tech support.
• Easier-Peasier: Send an email to literaciespublisher (at) gmail (dot) com. Include the content of your post, the title and the tags you want to use to index it and how you would like to sign it and I will post it for you.

Any questions? Please post a comment or contact me by email ~ literaciespublisher (at) gmail (dot) com.