Learning Online

Learning online is becoming a popular method of obtaining professional development. There are thousands of web sites, news groups, listservs and forums on nearly any topic available to educators with a computer and an Internet connection. The convenience of participating in classes or discussions on your schedule is a definite plus with today's demands on your time and limited budget. However, anyone who has joined an active listserv understands how overwhelming it can be to receive dozens, if not hundreds, of email messages every day. Information overload quickly drowns the useful nuggets in a sea of fluff.

Online Conferencing

As with email and listservs, online conferencing allows for the asynchronous electronic exchange of written messages. However, there are a major differences between each of these tools, and for the purpose of providing ongoing, continuous professional development, online conferencing is the most versatile and effective.

An online conference is a threaded public discussion forum. Anyone with access to the conference can read and respond to posted messages. With message threading, discussions are easy to follow while retaining the context of the topic. Irrelevant messages are skipped no matter when they were posted chronologically. As hot topics develop, specific conferences can be created providing an area focused solely on that discussion.

Conference messages are stored and archived on a central server accessible to all as opposed to being saved on a user's individual computer. This allows participants to join a discussion from anywhere with access to the entire history of messages rather than be dependent on using a single computer. This differs greatly from listservs where messages are delivered to a user's computer and stored there. Listservs also do not allow for message threading and topic grouping without a great deal of effort, while that capability is designed into online conferences.

With all discussion messages stored on one server and available only through a public conference, a user's personal mailbox remains empty. Personal message overload, so common with listservs, is avoided. There may be a comparable number of messages in an online conference, but they are grouped within subject sub-conferences and threaded by topic. Messages of no interest can be easily ignored without the effort of deleting them from the mailbox. When messages are read in a conference, the reader has chosen them specifically and is more likely to be focused on the topic rather than simply wading through email.