As discussed in Scenarios for how to use Expert Voices Discovery Team Expert Voices blogs are online conversations among some combination of subject experts, teachers, librarians and students.
How do you engage a new discovery team in an Expert Voices online conversation?
Expert Voices discovery team blogs can start anywhere. An interesting blog topic may be selected from visitors’ suggestions, from NSDL partner suggestions, or may bubble up from presentations at events, or from among project collaborators around ongoing work. Good blog topics are often subjects that bloggers are passsionate about. The process for establishing a discovery team blog includes becoming familiar with Expert Voices help documentation and understanding contributors’ roles in a blog. Each blog has an editor/administrator who understands the blog’s objective, establishes the blog, assigns permissions to other bloggers, and monitors blog activity. This involves approving comments from readers and gently prodding discovery team members to participate for the duration of the blog.
Step 1: Topic idea
If you take a look at the “About” descriptions of discovery team blog conversations currently underway at http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/you will quickly understand that each of these conversations is being edited from a particular point of view and with a specific goal.
For example, the Teaching Measurement at the Middle School Leveldescription suggests that the general topic of Middle School Math is of interest to many middle school teachers. Instead of tackling the entire subject in one conversation, blog editor Terese Herrera has focused the conversation on “Measurement” as a subject that will give teachers a forum to discuss good math teaching practices while providing content in the form of lessons and tips that will be immediately useful in middle school math classrooms.
So, while a broad topic like “Mathematics” may be very interesting, blog conversations are better suited to smaller, targeted subjects within a broad topic area. And you will be more likely to find willing bloggers who feel qualified to write about a narrow area of expertise, rather than about a subject that looks overwhelming.
Step 2: Finding an Editor
If the topic is your idea then you are the best candidate for editing and administering this blog.
Please read the Expert Voices Help document entitled “For editors/admins” here:
Step 3: Identifying Members
Emails with follow-up phone calls are the best way to engage potential bloggers in your topic. Here is an template for an introductory email that asks the person to consider becoming a blogger:
INTRODUCTORY LETTER TO POTENTIAL BLOGGERS
Dear ____________,
Hope this finds you well. (Anther personalized sentence here.) Would you be interested joining an Expert Voices discovery team to discuss _________________________?
I will be editing an Expert Voices discovery team blog about ________________ from __________ to __________ , and would appreciate having the benefit of your knowledge included in this conversation. As you may know, NSDL Expert Voices is a system that uses weblog technology to support collaborative STEM conversations among content experts, scientists, teachers, and students. Moderated conversations are designed to tie NSDL resources to additional resources that may include science news as well as context for resources that enhance discovery, selection, and use.
Here’s how conversations work.
Only discovery team members may add a new blog entry. Please read the Expert Voices Help document entitled “For Contributors” here:
I hope this sounds like something you would like to pursue because I believe that your point of view will be particularly valuable. I’ll give you a call in the next week to discuss details.
For now,
Remember to point potential discovery team members to in-depth, illustrated tutorials on all aspects of how to use the Expert Voices system here.
