Today we will continue to work on the final project. The focus for today will be joining a conversation about your research topic. The first thing you will need to do is find a newsgroup that has some relationship to your topic. You can do this by clicking on the Newsgroups button at the top of the Netscape window and then clicking on View all newsgroups. After the list appears, spend some time searching for an appropriate newsgroup that you can use to post a querie about your topic.

Before posting you should reconsider some of the thinking that we did when we talked abut internet communities. Remember that the newsgroups themselves represent communities, so before you post your message you should spend some time assessing the kinds of discussion that take place on the group. Once you have read throguh some of the previous postings and gotten a sense of the make-up of the newsgroup, you can begin composing your querie

You have already been thinking about a topic question, so working on a querie should follow from that. Spend some time refining yur thinking about your topic question so that the querie that you post to the group will answer some aspect of your question that you might not be able to find information or insight on otherwise; don't expect the group to do your homewok for you or to answer obvious factual questions. Also spend some energy introducing your post; summarize your thinking on the topic; point to what you think are the particularly important or tricky aspects of the topic, then pose your question. Once you have written a question that seeks clarification, save a copy of it somewhere and post it to the group.

You should expect to look for feedback on your question in a couple of days. Rmember that with newsgroups you should document and save a copy of any important postings; articles may disappear quickly.

Finally, I'd like you to send a copy of your querie to the rest of the class. Use the form below:

Your e-mail address:

Your name:

What was the querie that you sent to the newsgroup?