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Lesson Plans


Re: housekeeping tip and subjects [rant--bet you can't delete this without reading it or even after reading it!]

From: Henry Taylor (taylorh)
Date: Sun Jul 09 2000 - 15:18:02 PDT

  • Next message: The Austin's: "Re: housekeeping tip and subjects"

    Is it really a "big help" to restrict the flow of information on
    a listserv? Certainly, if one's goal is to invest as limited an
    amount of time as possible exchanging information on the list it
    could be a "big help".

    It is amazing how rich and complex communication, the human
    exchange of information, can be. You probably wouldn't believe it
    if I told you. The most unintelligible bit of gibberish can
    contain vast amounts of significant information. We deeply
    impoverish our exchange of information when we restrict it's
    flow. When, in the interest of personal convenience, we block
    communication in public channels we deny resources to the others
    who would participate and deny them things that we value.

    This MIGHT make sense if everyone was forced to read every word
    published on the list and pay for the receipt of every word.
    Fortunately this isn't the case.

    If expense is an issue getting a free e-mail account like HOTMAIL
    at www.msn.com will solve that problem in a snap. it can be
    accessed from your existing browser and will hold without a
    problem more traffic than comes across on artsed net.

    If you CHOSE the digest format let me suggest it isn't a very
    efficient use of your time. However, you still don't HAVE to read
    everything. Under Edit use the FIND command to follow any
    keyword. Last year I only read convention related information on
    the digest with great ease in that manner.

    If you get each incoming message seperately it's very easy to
    delete stuff of no interest to you. After all this is a public
    list with contributors from many grade levels, academic stations,
    and countries across the planet. Dont expect that most of the
    information here will have significance to you. If that is
    important let me suggest you move over to www.intranets.com and
    start an intranet or list for 1st Grade art teachers in Virginia
    with an interest in clay and multicultiural art education--or
    Professors of Graduate level Art Education-- or what have you.
    You will have a great deal more control of your experience that
    way.

    If you think you are able to handle something more complex you
    can use your e-mail program (either the one that your computer
    offers you or a free on-line one like hotmail) to sort and delete
    incoming mail by any criteria you choose to apply---400 posts at
    a time if you so choose.

    Alternately you can claim status as "Dorothy, the meek and
    powerless" and ask the wizard to protect you from any effort
    whatsoever and to magically shred everything you don't care about
    without demonstrating any consideration for anyone else because
    "Damn it! They waste bandwidth talking about stuff that isn't
    interesting (TO ME) and if that isn't a lack of consideration
    what is?" (All the while, at the same time subscribing, no doubt,
    to newspapers and magazines where they don't experience the need
    to read every word of!)

    Come on children!!! A listserve is very much the same as a local
    newspaper or national magazine; and you HAVE TO PAY YOUR OWN GOOD
    MONEY FOR THOSE. Should you have to pay for stuff you don't read?

    Maybe this big scary technology is the problem. You want all the
    benefits but, gosh golly, learning to actually use the technology
    is just too much to ask. You don't know how to delete or
    unsubscribe so you want everyone to conduct their correspondence
    in a way which is of as little inconvenience to YOU as possible.

    S i g h . . .

    Look does anyone here EVER talk about stuff at their jopbs that
    DOESN'T pertain directly to their Jobs? Mention your family or
    coming holidays? talk about the weather or traffic or going to
    happy hour on friday after work? Same thing! I've been in offices
    that tried to maintain "professionalism" in that way and franklly
    it sucked big time.

    In the end, take a lesson from the wonderful world of
    ecology---the more things going on in an environment, the more
    differences present in an environment the richer more viable and
    more stable it becomes. What do you have to do with a thousand
    acres of cotton? Worry about bole weevils, a hundred other pests
    and how much the all pesticides are going top effect your life.

    So, as long as we're talking about it, it would be a "big help"
    to me if we could all contribute a little more to the
    conversation here. Specifically I'm talking about the lurkers who
    read and don't contribute. C'mon guys! We're world building here!
    This is one of the anvils on which art education is being shaped.
    There is no way we can claim to be able to teach creativity if we
    can't come up with more creative ways and reasons to teach art.
    We have 50 ways to make Play Doh... We need more ways to teach
    art and more ways to connect art to being human. This is a
    community not a factory tho so we also need better recipies for
    Guacomole and Plum Brandy; cures for weight gain and hangovers.
    We need more mail here.

    As far as managing e-mail we need more than just the few poor
    ideas I've contributed here. Tell us how YOU do it! IS deleting
    boring posts (perhaps like this one) truly a nightmare?

    MORE MAIL NOW!

    -henry
    ;-) 

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