[Richard Jones-Nerzic]

I have been using the Internet in the history classroom for about seven years now. Whilst at the beginning this new hypertext environment appeared undoubtedly revolutionary, for me, it was the communication possibilities that accompanied it that excited most. The Internet had the potential to break down spatial and temporal barriers that restricted student learning. The Internet would enable students to communicate with other students, other teachers, other interested groups, at anytime and anywhere in the world. Yet seven years on, the hypertext environment has grown exponentially and Internet communication for learning is still largely an unfulfilled potential. What are the reasons for this? Perhaps this might be the first point of discussion?

Whatever the historical reasons for the limited use of the Internet for communicative purposes in learning, the advent of a new generation of forum software like this one (invision) means that many practical obstacles have been overcome.

In this seminar I’d like to discuss where we go from here. Over the last 12-18 months there have been a number of experiments in using forums for student learning. The most notable example has been the History Help forum hosted on this website. What have we learnt from this experience?

I’d also like to look closely at the specific history learning possibilities. I have some ideas about a range of different types of history learning experience that forums enable, but I’m sure these only begin to scratch the surface. I’d like this seminar to get into the practicalities of examining the types of history skills and history content best suited to forum use. After all, forums should be used because they add a dimension to history learning unavailable in a traditional classroom context.

Finally, I’d like us to discuss the practicalities of integrating the use of a student forum into the annual curriculum. So far, collaborative projects have been one-off, often spontaneous, responses to experimental initiatives and short-term needs. Perhaps one of the reasons teachers have been reluctant to invest their time into communicative projects, is because they don’t easily fit into a long-term scheme of work. A history teacher’s time is precious and best spent on making successful activities and resources that can be used year after year. The Internet environment, both hypertext and communicative can be annoyingly transient to curriculum planners at whatever level.

Richard Jones-Nerzic
Toulouse, 14 April 2004

This post has been edited by Richard Jones-Nerzic: 31 October 2004 - 03:07 PM

[JP Raud Dugal]

Richard Jones-Nerzic, on Apr 14 2004, 10:53 AM, said:

Over the last 12-18 months there have been a number of experiments in using forums for student learning. The most notable example has been the History Help forum hosted on this website. What have we learnt from this experience?

Sorry to begin by this but I made a lot of thinking myself using my own forum (about GMO's and Haig's failure in the Somme).

One of the thing I did was to lock it to non users. This is due to the fact that I use PHPNuke Tech, a bit less sophisticated compares to Invasion (as far as I understand everything). But it's free...

It is not as dynamic as are yours. I wanted some days ago to try Blogs on another topic...

Can you explain to us what are the advantages of your forum and what are the drawbacks (if any)?

Jean Philippe

[John Simkin]

Richard Jones-Nerzic, on Apr 14 2004, 10:53 AM, said:

I have been using the Internet in the history classroom for about seven years now. Whilst at the beginning this new hypertext environment appeared undoubtedly revolutionary, for me, it was the communication possibilities that accompanied it that excited most. The Internet had the potential to break down spatial and temporal barriers that restricted student learning. The Internet would enabling students to communicate with other students, other teachers, other interested groups, at anytime and anywhere in the world. Yet seven years on, the hypertext environment has grown exponentially and Internet communication for learning is still largely an unfulfilled potential.  What are the reasons for this? Perhaps this might be the first point of discussion?

This is a subject that I have given a lot of thought to recently. Three months ago I decided to devote a section of my website to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. During my research I came across James Fetzer, the author of several books on the assassination. He teaches at the University of Minnesota and has written over 20 books on artificial intelligence and the philosophy of science. Fetzer’s approach to the assassination is that of a scientist (his first book on the subject was called Assassination Science).

Fetzer invited me to join his JFK Research Forum. This is a group of scientists, historians and journalists carrying out research into the assassination. The forum is used in two main ways: (1) people post details of their latest research and this is then debated by other members; (2) people ask questions about specific aspects of the case.

This group were in fact acting in a very similar way to the people who created the web. In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee began investigating ways in which a group of physicists working for the European Centre for Nuclear Research in Geneva could improve their communication system. The problem they faced was that they were living and working in different countries and found sharing research information difficult. Berners-Lee solved this problem by writing software that linked the scientist’s computers together. This enabled them to retrieve and handle data on each other’s computers. Understandably this idea was given the name “World Wide Web”.

Forum software has taken this sharing of research one stage further. Information is shared openly between all members of the group at the same time. It seemed to me that Fetzer and his friends had adapted this approach to the study of history. However, communication was restricted to a fairly small group of people.

As one can imagine, this JFK Research Forum has become an invaluable source of information and has made the job of producing materials on the JFK assassination far easier than it would have been. It therefore got me thinking about if it is possible to adopt this approach to teaching in schools.

What I have done is to put a link from every page (now over 200) on the assassination to a specifically created forum on the subject. It is also linked to a series of student activities on the assassination. This includes activities that enable students to consider the different theories of the assassination that have been developed so far by researchers. They are also encouraged to develop their own theories.

http://www.spartacus...uk/JFKindex.htm

http://www.spartacus...JFKresearch.htm

http://educationforu...p?showforum=126


So far I have created this forum for teachers. However, I now plan to create another section for students. This will enable them to read what the teachers have said about the assassination as well as having the right to post questions and comments on the topic.

To help answer these questions I have persuaded several experts (ten so far) on the subject to take part in this experiment. I am also trying to get important witnesses to the events surrounding the assassination to take part. So far I have persuaded two very important figures in the case to answer questions. Hopefully, I will be able to convince others to join in. I am also currently negotiating with two men who have both confessed to being involved in the assassination.

This approach could be taken with other topics. For example, I am considering starting up a similar forum on the Home Front during the Second World War. Please contact me if you have any elderly relatives who would be willing to answer student questions on this subject. I have four elderly relatives who have agreed to take part (one soldier who fought in Middle East, two women who endured the Blitz and a child who was evacuated). Only one of these is computer literate and therefore I will organize their registration and the posting of the answers of the other three. Are there any members who could help me with this? Do you have parents, uncles, aunts, etc. who might like to take part in this project. I am especially keen to get people from a wide variety of different countries to take part. For example, it would then be possible to have people from both the UK and Germany answering questions on subjects like air raid shelters and food rationing. I am sure students would find the activity very stimulating. I will probably link the forum to my simulation on the home front during the war. I will then expand this out to cover other countries and other aspects of the war.

http://www.spartacus...t.co.uk/2WW.htm

http://www.spartacus....uk/2WWhome.htm

http://www.spartacus...k/2WWhomeAC.htm

[Dan Moorhouse]

Richard Jones-Nerzic, on Apr 14 2004, 10:53 AM, said:

I’d also like to look closely at the specific history learning possibilities. I have some ideas about a range of different types of history learning experience that forums enable, but I’m sure these only begin to scratch the surface. I’d like this seminar to get into the practicalities of examining the types of history skills and history content best suited to forum use. After all, forums should be used because they add a dimension to history learning unavailable in a traditional classroom context.

A few of the hurdles that need to be overcome:

Firewalls. I've managed to get sites such as the history help forum 'approved' and accessible within our firewall. However several schools that I work closely with haven't been able to do that. Makes using a forum for collaborative purposes quite difficult if they can't access it. solution? E-mail exchanges. Can still have the comments stored online and accessible for all (firewall permitting) using resources such as Smartgroups.

Time. I'm fortunate in that i've got a technician in school who is quite happy to pre-register classes on forums for me and set up all of the user permissions etc. That makes it very easy for me to use forums within school. whenever I've tried to set things up with neighbouring schools the answer has invariably been no because they haven't the time or the 'know how' required to register students on the forums. (Usually invision free forums). Solution? Not sure. I'd hoped that it would be easy enough to get pupils to register themselves but even my A Level class seem unable to follow simple instructions about what the usernames should be To date the only solution we've found that has worked has been to get classlists from the other participating schools and register the lot myself / with the help of our technicians. Not the best use of our time though.

However, it is worthwhile putting the effort in as there is a lot to be gained from using forums. You only have to take a look at the Child labour debate that Richard and others participated in to see that the outcomes can be extremely positive.

Other than work on Interpretations, what else can forum software be used for?
I'm hoping to use forum software to improve liaison with our feeder schools. That work will need to embrace a wider range of skills than simply encouraging debate. Knowledge and understanding can be developed quite easily through having online question and answer sessions on specified topics, perhaps with a guest 'expert' - online hotseating? I'm also toying with the idea of setting up a bank of sources using php driven software. Using it as an online archive aimed at a fairly narrow area of the curriculum (Crime in Tudor England). If the titles are specific enough the search function ought to enable use of the database as a research tool: other areas of the forum could then be used for Q&A, debate etc. (Not tried it yet and haven't really developed this line of thought too much).

[Richard Jones-Nerzic]

JP Raud Dugal, on Apr 14 2004, 02:53 PM, said:

One of the thing I did was to lock it to non users. This is due to the fact that I use PHPNuke Tech, a bit less sophisticated compares to Invasion (as far as I understand everything). But it's free...

Can you explain to us what are the advantages of your forum and what are the drawbacks (if any)?

Thanks for that JP. It's worth reinforcing at the start that invision is also free.

Some of the concerns that people have and that have also contributed to the limited application in the classroom until now?

Security of the students is clearly an issue. How to guarantee that only the right people have access to the students and vice versa? Reliability of both software and hardware is also an issue. Until recently, forum software could be slow and relatively complex, particularly a problem if students were unfamiliar with the medium. School hardware and Internet connection is notoriously unreliable and again until recently, most students had no other means of access. A final problem is the unrestricted nature of the Internet. What if students fail to recognise the forum as an extension of the classroom and contribute with inappropriate language and comments? Can we trust them?

Most of the advantages of the most recent software you can see for yourself as a user. As a teacher administrator it allows for easy-to-manage, collaborative projects between varieties of educational centres. Geographically dispersed schools, even in significantly different time zones, can easily work together. It requires no particular software to join an established forum and avoids the logistic headaches associated with other forms of communicative technology such as video conferencing.

It is important to note that an educational forum is not a ‘chat room’. The presence of a teacher as a ‘moderator’ or ‘administrator’ creates a secure (virtual) learning environment. Teachers determine the level of security. The teacher decides who can view content and who can write content; whether members may communicate privately or start new topic ‘threads’ etc. It is possible, for example, to create a forum or sub-forum that is invisible to all but those invited to participate. If students do make inappropriate comments they can be easily deleted and the student placed in 'moderation'. All their future posts have to pass through a teacher moderator before publication. This happened in the Spring Europe debate last year on the topic of immigration. On that occasion Andrew (Field) had to put one of my students in moderation until things had cooled down. The students apologized. The great thing about that debate was to read the students opinions evolving through the discussion.

An educational forum is motivational and relevant to students. Students enjoy having their work instantly ‘published’ on the Internet. In the Spring Europe debate there were 386 contributions to the main event and 11 to the supplementary evaluation period, approximately 36000 words in total. There were only 30 Y9-Y10 students involved. The forum topics were ‘viewed’ in total 2856 times. The format of the learning reflects a ‘real world’ perspective. For students, forums are a relevant form of communication in a way that an exercise book full of handwritten notes is not. A forum opens up the closed dialogue between teacher and learner. In a forum, students become producers of content for a wider audience.

On the problems with current forums. As Dan says, firewalls might be a problem. But a firewall that doesn't allow you to adjust global settings for specific sites is a useless firewall.

I agree with Dan that the other significant problem I have encountered is registration of students. For security reasons it is important that all participants in a virtual discussion are known to real teachers and vice versa. This means that all students should be registered by a teacher. As far as I know, you cannot mass register a group of students. It has to be done one at a time. This can be very time consuming.

On the other points more later.

[Richard Jones-Nerzic]

Dan Moorhouse, on Apr 15 2004, 10:07 AM, said:

Other than work on Interpretations, what else can forum software be used for?

Knowledge and understanding can be developed quite easily through having online question and answer sessions on specified topics, perhaps with a guest 'expert' - online hotseating? 

A few weeks ago, I came with the following list:

History Help. Teachers provide learning support on a needs basis.

Historical debates. Students ‘discuss’ and construct and deconstruct interpretations of contentious events in history. Was the British Empire a force for good or evil? Who killed President Kennedy? Which country was most to blame for the start of the Cold War? etc.

Empathetic simulations. Rather than historians, students take on the role of historical characters: slave owners and abolitionists, Tories and Whigs, factory workers and child labourers. They discuss ‘in character’, adopting the attitudes and opinions of the people of that time. See case study The 19th century child labour simulation.

Remote seminars. A guest teacher/lecturer leads a discussion with students on a topic of their particular expertise. Students from different schools studying the same topic participate and learn together reading and questioning a recognised expert.

Living ‘oral’ history. Students ‘interview’ an individual who was an eyewitness to event of historical importance: a child during World War II, a Vietnam veteran, a Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution, etc.

Remote group work. It is possible to set up a forum to give only certain members of a class access to discrete areas of the forum. Students might prepare for a class activity by sharing ideas in a private online area. Groups could be formed between classes in other schools. For example, students might prepare for a real classroom simulation of the Treaty of Versailles by collaborating with other Woodrow Wilsons or Georges Clemenceaus in other schools.

I think that forums will usefully linked to teacher's/class websites. In big schools this will allow different classes to work together and in small schools students to work with others elsewhere. I taught an IB group of two last year. How they might have benefited from regular contact with other students!

[JP Raud Dugal]

Richard Jones-Nerzic, on Apr 15 2004, 11:34 AM, said:

It is important to note that an educational forum is not a ‘chat room’. The presence of a teacher as a ‘moderator’ or ‘administrator’ creates a secure (virtual) learning environment. Teachers determine the level of security. The teacher decides who can view content and who can write content; whether members may communicate privately or start new topic ‘threads’ etc.

Thank you Richard for your answer.

Saying that teachers have to be 'moderator' surely mean that a forum can't be open to a lot of classes.
How many students can be involved in the same discussion?

Did you think about evaluation, assessment etc etc after these posts? If so, could you give an example? (I know in the french system everything has to be evaluated )

What about the teachers' role? Did you 'talked' about that with Andrew before? Did you adapt yourself little by little?

Jean Philippe

[John Simkin]

I believe that online forums is the killer application we have been looking for. Richard has set out all the different ways they can be used. I find the idea of making it possible for people who have experienced important events to be available to answer questions on a forum particularly exciting (especially when they come from other countries).

However, there are several practical problems to overcome.

(1) One involves finding the witnesses. Especially as the are likely to be elderly and not at ease with computers. The three people I have registered so far for the Second World War project are in their 80s and do not own a computer. When questions are asked that I think they can answer I will phone them up and take down their views. However, this is far from ideal. I intend to use my two newsletters to ask for volunteers. I will also ask people via my website.

(2) It will be time-consuming to run such forums. I don’t know if you are aware of it but Charles Clarke has set up a committee of historians to advise him on how the subject can be improved in the classroom. Clarke chairs these committee meetings. Yesterday I wrote to the committee explaining the importance of forums and suggesting that the government funds these projects.

(3) There is obviously a problem of registering students for forums. Is it out of the question to allow students to register themselves? The moderator has the power to delete or edit inappropriate postings. Another possibility is for the teacher to register on behalf of a class. The students submit their comments in Word and after being checked they can be posted in bulk.

[Dan Moorhouse]

John Simkin, on Apr 16 2004, 11:19 AM, said:

(3) There is obviously a problem of registering students for forums. Is it out of the question to allow students to register themselves? The moderator has the power to delete or edit inappropriate postings. Another possibility is for the teacher to register on behalf of a class. The students submit their comments in Word and after being checked they can be posted in bulk.

A lot depends on a schools policy about the use of forums etc. My students aren't allowed to include their forename AND surname in a username for example, yet give them the chance to register themselves and 99% of them do so. That simply creates more work for the teacher: it is faster to import names from a classlist

A few years ago my ICT technician set up a project on the 1960's and 70's that was fairly similar in design to the WW2 project. we were astounded by the number of people who were willing to participate. Initially we asked people to post their memories on this site. Then we invitied a number of the Vietnam veterans to participate in a Q&A session on a forum (which sadly appears to now be offline).

[Carole Faithorn]

John Simkin, on Apr 16 2004, 11:19 AM, said:

(3) There is obviously a problem of registering students for forums. Is it out of the question to allow students to register themselves? The moderator has the power to delete or edit inappropriate postings. Another possibility is for the teacher to register on behalf of a class. The students submit their comments in Word and after being checked they can be posted in bulk.

As you may be aware, I am actively involved as an Administrator and Moderator on our History Help Forum.

Students do indeed 'register themselves' (though not for the debates that took place on C19th Child Labour and Spring Day in Europe 2003 which were open only to students at the participating schools). The system now in operation is that the first post of a newly registered student is automatically moderated. The fact that several of us visit the Forum quite frequently throughout the day means that there is rarely more than a short time lag between the initial enquiry and their message being posted and answered. If that first post is 'sensible' then all the student's subsequent posts appear straight away.

We have one or two 'idiots' who we have put on permanent moderation and a couple of people have been permanently banned from posting but by and large they are very sensible.

In the main, of course, the bulk of our members are just seeking help with a specific enquiry. However we do now have A Student Discussion (Historical issues) Forum as well ( a sub-section of the main HelpForum), set up in response to enquiries by one particular student (and following a particularly hectic night when three of them were using the Forum as a Chat Room - though they were discussing History/School issues).

This Student Discussion Forum is reasonably successful. I can't say that very many have got involved in the discussions but there have been absolutely no problems involved in moderating it. The student who suggested the idea has also been made a moderator of that Forum. The topics - in the main suggested by students themselves - have not been particularly controversial so that may well account for the fact that all has gone very smoothly so far.

Like others posting in this Seminar I think that the potential of such Forums is huge and only regret that I am no longer in the classroom since I would definitely be encouraging my students to participate in discussions on both academic and wider political issues if I were.

I particularly like the hot-seating a specialist in the field idea. Imagine, for example, having someone like Ian Kershaw available to discuss the Hitler Myth with A level students (or indeed students from other countries too)!

I do have some experience of this sort of thing with adult learners and my experiences have been somewhat varied. I think that it is easy for the discussion to be dominated by a handful of people (as was also the case, for example, with the discussion for Spring Day in Europe) and many students will not participate unless it is an absolute requirement that they do. It is also important that if you invite an 'expert' to the Forum to answer questions that you are confident that they will visit the Forum regularly over a given period of time (say two weeks). On one particular occasion that I did that it was a disaster as the 'expert' hardly contributed at all.

Yes. There are potential problems, but the potential benefits far outweigh these I think.

[Richard Jones-Nerzic]

JP Raud Dugal, on Apr 15 2004, 10:02 PM, said:

Saying that teachers have to be 'moderator' surely mean that a forum can't be open to a lot of classes.
How many students can be involved in the same discussion?

Did you think about evaluation, assessment etc etc after these posts? If so, could you give an example? (I know in the french system everything has to be evaluated  )

What about the teachers' role? Did you 'talked' about that with Andrew before? Did you adapt yourself little by little?

How many students is an interesting question. It clearly depends on the number of teachers prepared to be involved and the number of different threads that students can contribute to. In the Child Labour debate the planning forum worked better than the debate itself, because there were less students involved in any one thread. The debate itself got out of hand because there were too many students (six classes) involved in just the one thread. It was impossible to keep up, let alone direct. Two classes of 30 students with six ‘threads’ to contribute to, is a realistic number to begin with. But even this depends upon the nature of the contribution.

The nature of evaluation will depend on the nature of the activity. At the IST, I'm in the fortunate position of being able to undertake activities because I think they will be educationally beneficial rather than something I have to be able to measure . When I started teaching in the UK there was a skill called 'empathy' that had to be graded 1-10 for GCSE examinations. Students produced wonderful history, but the marking and moderation was a bit of a farce, so we stopped doing it. Now students don't do empathy as much anymore. Personally, I think this is a shame. I reward students for the quality of their contributions. We discussed as a class which contributions were the best and why and (in the Child Labour example) our resident expert and chairman (John Simkin) wrote a detailed 'assessment' of the students' work. http://www.schoolhis...p?showtopic=457 None of my students was given a grade, but all were assessed. A student's contribution to a forum is neither traditional written work or class discussion, but somewhere in between. How often do we grade a students contribution to class discussion?

The teacher's role is also interesting. The role of the teacher in the Spring Europe debate was in some ways similar to a normal classroom discussion: we watched and ‘listened’ carefully, prompted and guided as necessary. But because students were obviously much more comfortable in the time and space allowed for contributions, the teacher’s role became much less prominent. Occasionally discussion needed to be ‘steered’ but a more interesting teaching role developed where there was a genuine need for traditional didacticism. A student might raise a question or seek clarification and the teacher provided this. However, because this was an online forum, the possibility existed of the teacher providing a hyperlink to a further appropriate resource. This form of teaching is already very common on the ‘Homework Help’ student forum at Schoolhistory.co.uk. But in a discussion forum such as this it further extends the ‘just-in-time’ learning ethos that is supposed to characterise the ICT revolution in education. The learner acquires the skills or knowledge necessary to move the learning on, at the moment they are necessary. This is efficient learning, because it is driven by need and personal motivation.

I don't remember discussing any of this with Andrew at the time, but email exchanges between teachers during the life of the forum ought to be enough. With forums there also exists the possibility of creating a thread invisible to all but teachers. We have done this to help coordinate the teachers role on The Education Forum student discussion section.

More later

[Richard Jones-Nerzic]

Carole Faithorn, on Apr 16 2004, 12:04 PM, said:

I do have some experience of this sort of thing with adult learners and my experiences have been somewhat varied. I think that it is easy for the discussion to be dominated by a handful of people (as was also the case, for example, with the discussion for Spring Day in Europe) and many students will not participate unless it is an absolute requirement that they do.

Significant student contributors to Spring Europe forum 2003.



Not quite a handful, but I get your point.

A forum clearly creates a different format for learning. As I posted above, it is neither traditional written work or classroom discussion, but a ‘third way’ somewhere between the two. Students who contributed most to the Spring Europe forum were not necessarily strongest ‘linguistic’ learners, neither were they those who might be expected to dominate normal classroom discussion.

The boy who 'dominated' had been almost invisible in the school before the forum. As one of the students put it 'I think that Henry has a great philosophy about things. Shame he is a bit shy and doesn't usually talk much.' http://www.schoolhis...topic=132&st=15 The dominant girl, was a Spanish (third language English) student who wouldn't normally have the confidence. Her little brother dominated the debate this year! http://educationforu...p?showforum=117

The Spring Europe forum was certainly closer to classroom discussion than traditional written work, but discussion with a difference. The contributions were more considered and often relatively complex. In class discussion students are often more concerned about what they are going to say and then building up the courage to say it. In the forum, students had to listen (read) each other carefully if they were to make a meaningful contribution. Furthermore, students could read each other contributions as often and as slowly as they liked, without distraction. And when they were ready to make a contribution they could take their time. Unlike in a classroom the discussion was far more natural because the students had decided to join the debate at that particular moment. In a class of 30 how many students might be expected to make a meaningful contribution in an hour-long discussion? How many students would be able to concentrate for that hour?

Perhaps the depersonalised nature of the discussion contributed to the more reasoned approach of the students. Live discussion and debate always relies somewhat on a 'performance' from the students; how things are said, as much what is said. In the forum, it was the ideas that mattered. It was interesting to note how many students changed their minds as they listened to each other. It was even more interesting to note how many publicly acknowledged their changing position.

[Carole Faithorn]

I am sorry if I have given the impression that I was in any way critical of the Debate, Richard. My remark about 'dominating students' was based on impression rather than analysis of statistics and I take your point entirely about the all benefits that are to be gained from discussion via a Forum rather in the classroom, particularly for those students who may be reluctant to contribute in the classroom.

Nevertheless, I think it remains true that the 'management' of a discussion may well need teacher input if all the students involved are to have the opportunity to express their views.

As I pointed out before, my only experience of this has been with adult learners, none of whom had I ever met. Encouraging the 'quiet ones' to participate and the vocal ones to 'hold back a bit' in order to allow everyone to express their views showed me that the management of discussions via a Forum involved quite sophisticated skills. I do, however, appreciate that the focus of this Seminar is on Student Forums.

[JP Raud Dugal]

Thank you Richard for the explanations. They are so helpful.

I have some more questions:

1- How did the students reacted when they saw that only some of then were rewarded by John?

2- Is one of the Education Forum aim to find some experts such as John in this case? (just answering because it is not obvious to have someone who could do everytime such a great job)

3- how many hours were focused on the forum? After doing them, what is your pov on that?

Jean Philippe

[Dom_Giles]

I am currently setting up an Invision discussion board for my Year 12 and 13 students. I hope to trial it this term and have it up and running properly from September. This is all totally new to me and will certainly involve a lot of trial and error. The info. on this seminar has been very useful - thanks.

I've decided to let the students register themselves using their first names - I hope this works

If it does all work out I would love to open it up to other schools. I work in Dubai so getting my students to debate with students from the UK (or France) would be great.

I'll keep you informed.

I do have one question. Can I stop members of my formun from PM ing or emailing each other, and if so how do I do it? I've had a look and can't figure it out. (I said it was all new to me). Cheers

This post has been edited by Dom_Giles: 18 April 2004 - 05:23 PM