I now devote part of my time to developing the academic discipline of analysing the processes and outputs of mass online discussion (that's conversations in forums and the comments threads to blogs, news articles and so on).
My passion for this subject started in maths education - see for example this article:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/55142332/Exploring-Discussion-Forums
And I am delighted to have been asked to manage and moderate the inspirational group:
Math, Math Education, Math Culture on linkedin.com, a role which I love and I would warmly invite any enthusiast of maths education to join this warm and vibrant group.
But my interest in forums has now grown beyond education and so I've started a separate blog specifically for it. The first post in my new blog (which I shall run in parallel with this one) contains my notes on cyberrhetoric - which is the ways in which participants in forums can post to help conversations which are stuck or abusive become productive and respectful -from the session I ran at the Mozilla Festival in Grenwich on Sunday. As well as developing this study further, I will also post on the analysis of the ways in which mass online discussion can enhance democracy and generate intellectual capital and I hope to link to other articles about mass online discussion. Here's the link:
http://cyberrhetoricbyrebeccahanson.blogspot.com/
I shall keep this blog for maths education and related issues in education.
