Will (& whoever else is interested) --

There are a whole range of ways to set this sort of thing up, and
which one you should use depends (partly) on what kind of
communication you want to foster.  I haven't much advice about
finding the _people_ for your students to write to, but one way would
be just to put it about on nets like CASLL that you're interested.

When it comes to configuring the lines of communication, though, you
can (a) just give everyone in your class a list of the addresses of
everyone in the other class if what you're interested in is just
one-on-one private communication (like traditional "pen pals").  Or
you can use your mail program to create a "distribution list" so that
each person involved can send to the whole of both groups involved or
some subset of that.  I've used that sort of thing for working
groups. One advantage of that is that usually anyone who has an
address can set up her own distribution list and you don't have to go
outside the group for expertise every time you want to change things
-- for instance, for creating an _ad hoc_ group for a particular
discussion or project.

Or you can arrange to set up a mailer like CASLL.  To do this you
usually need access to an outside expert -- CASLL is set up on a
large UNB UNIX machine and I had to go through some procedures to
get it set up at the UNB LISTSERV, but once it's in place that sort
of distribution list can be modified pretty easily: individuals can
subscribe and drop off for themselves, or _I_ can put names on and
off the list.  You can set up such lists so that that they are
"archived." (CASLL isn't, but I save everything that gets posted to
it).

Finally, you can create a bulletin board or newsgroup.  The main
difference here is that rather than receiving mail, you have to "go"
look at the bulletin board (typically by logging on to it), and that
the whole discussion is all there all the time, and usually fairly
easy to move back and forth in, at any time.  Often they're
"stranded" according to topics, and discussions are structured by
that in a way that they're not on a list like CASLL, so separate
conversations are easier to follow.

How you do this depends on what kind of software you can get access
to, what sort of network you're using, etc.  If it's going to involve
two separate sites, you probably need a way to telnet to one central
system or to set up something like a web page with the discussion on
it.

I hope that's some help in thinking about the alternatives. We're
putting together a fairly full description of the suite of stuff we
used in the Aquinas Program last year, and are going to make it
available at the St. Thomas gopher and web home page within a week or
two; I'll try to remember to post a note to CASLL when it's up.

                                    -- Russ


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Russell A. Hunt            __|~_)_ __)_|~_   Learning and Teaching
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From:     Self <ACADEMIC/HUNT>
To:       [log in to unmask]
Subject:  Re: Setting up electronic networks