ERIC Number: EJ1084640
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0816-9020
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Teacher Professional Conversations--The oz-Teachers Story
Lloyd, Margaret; Skyring, Carol; Nykvist, Shaun
Australian Educational Computing, v30 n2 2015
The oz-Teachers listserv, an email list for teachers, ran continuously for 20 years, from 1995 to 2015. It provided the technical infrastructure for professional communication with the majority of its members being Australian teachers based in classrooms across the country. An analysis of the list archives provides us with interesting insights as to how teachers learn from and within communities of their peers and how such communities offer social and educational affordances to allow teachers to generate and enhance their own learning. This paper begins with a brief review of the response to the announcement of the list's closure. It then moves to a report of the types of communication which emerged from the list over time with comparisons drawn from extant research, namely, an early analysis of email lists and a more contemporary study of teacher communication through microblogging. We identified 14 categories with eight of these being paired, namely, as asking/seeking and responding/giving. The key finding of this analysis was that the list, and its professional discussions, were sustained through reciprocity and collective intelligence, that is, sharing of information and resources and that this was evident through the life of the listserv.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Electronic Mail, Teacher Collaboration, Communities of Practice, Computer Mediated Communication, Web Sites, Electronic Publishing, Interpersonal Communication, Communication Strategies, Teachers, Help Seeking, Helping Relationship, Information Seeking, Information Dissemination, Access to Information, Shared Resources and Services
Australian Council for Computers in Education. P.O. Box 1255, Belconnen, ACT 2616, Australia. Tel: +61-3-9349-3733; Fax: +61-3-9349-5356; Web site: http://www.acce.edu.au
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Australia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A