Background

The following activity will help you learn to search and sort Email list archives (collections of past Email messages posted to a list). There are two main reasons for learning this skill. First, it would be good to understand the culture of an email list community before making a decision to join one. List archives provide a record of past traffic. Second, if you're looking for information or opinions on a specific topic, the answers may already exist in the community's archives.

Your web brower open with the voced-coord list archives bookmarked.

Another browser window open with the EdNA version of the archive
(Select "Voc-Ed Coordinators Online" from the collection of EdNA hosted archives.)

You will find links to these and other VECO lists at:
http://www.veco.ash.org.au/community/archives.asp

Note: you will be working with two versions of the archive, the "home" version on OzTeacherNet and the EdNA version.

Activity 1: familiarisation with the archives

• Browse the voced-coord list archives for a few minutes to gain an overview of how the list works and how the archive works.

• Repeat this for the EdNA version.

• What differences do you notice?

1. how many individual contributors were there?

2. who were some regular contributors?

3. the name of one person new to the list?

4. whether there was any material on Special Needs

Activity 2: Using the archives to solve problems

1. Find out what discussion has occurred on the issue of timetabling. Note dates and names of senders (Hint: you may find it easier to use a combination of the two versions of the archives)

2. What was the great cappuccino debate which occurred late in 1997?

Activity 3: Using list archives to analyse community participation

1. Select a sequence of 10 messages and analyse them.

2. Classify each one in terms of the type of activity undertaken

3. Think about what the online activity adds to traditional mechanisms

4. List the roles that people are playing in these activities