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 __|~_ Russell A. Hunt __|~_)_ __)_|~_ Learning and Teaching Department of English )_ __)_|_)__ __) Development Office St. Thomas University | )____) | EMAIL:[log in to unmask] Fredericton, New Brunswick___|____|____|____/ FAX: (506) 450-9615 E3B 5G3 CANADA \ / PHONE: (506) 452-0644 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From: Self <ACADEMIC/HUNT> To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Setting up electronic networks