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Freedom vs. Moderation on forums, blogs, etc.

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I want to say from the start that this thread is not intended to relate directly to this forum, is not intended to address (and I would ask that it not be brought up) policies and moderation on this forum, or in anyway intended to be a thread on this forum. A comment in another thread got me thinking about the trade-offs in general between different types of moderation styles in various types of web 2.0 communities. I haven't been a member of many forums and I haven't subscribed to that many blogs, but I have read around fairly widely and I do have some experience as a member of other sites. So I would like to illustrate the nature of my query with a few examples:

Two Blogs Diverged in a Yellow Wood Used in Dendroclimatology

There's a retired businessman by the name of Steve McIntyre. About a decade ago he started looking into two extremely influential climate reconstruction studies commonly referred to as MBH98 & MBH99. I won't go into this story in any depth as there quite literally is a book devoted to it and it is ongoing, but to make a long story short he became something of a name in the climate science community (published a few papers, advised on committees including the IPCC), and is generally hated by all the big name climate scientists. A group of climate scientist started a blog some time ago called realclimate which was intended to provide climate info for the public by actual climate scientists. McIntyre initially tried to defend his point of view at that site as he was being attacked but kept finding his commentary deleted. So he started his own blog climateaudit which is devoted to the issues, from mathematical to politics masquerading as science, with temperature data reconstruction.

How is this relevant? Well, he found himself in a blog on a pretty specific set of topics that was run by extremely knowledgeable specialists who had the capacity to judge whether contributions actually were informed enough to be so. However, it seems that a good many of McIntyre's comments were deleted because the scientists running the blog just didn't agree with him. More importantly, McIntyre decided to go a different way. Apart from personal attacks, deleting spam, and occasionally tidying things up, he doesn't delete anything. Were it not for the fact that realclimate is written by authors who have access to resources McIntyre does not, I'd say that climateaudit is simply a better blog because McIntyre was determined not to stifle contrary voices. Finally, just so this isn't construed as an anti-AGW bit, another blog by noted skeptic Dr. Roy Spencer (a leading expert in satellite data and a genuine climate scientist) also has a blog and didn't even allow commentary for some time. I believe it is still not a place to go for discussion.

So what are the pros and cons so far? On the one hand, if done correctly, guys like Gavin Schmidt over at realclimate have the background knowledge to make sure junk about climate science isn't posted and do a great job on quality control. However, it takes a great deal of self-reflection and control to prevent one's self from unintentionally silencing alternative voices by mistaking contrary opinions believed to be wrong for uninformed or flawed opinions.

I'm going to give to more examples but I think this is enough to start. I'm interested in peoples feeling about the trade-off between quality control to attempt to keep the level of dialogue (perhaps even if only regarding certain issues or on e.g., a forum dedicated to linguistics) vs. the freedom to be able to say anything you think (apart from the stuff all forums seem to ban like spamming or positing illegal information). Under what conditions should someone trying to encourage discussion on a blog or forum or similar web 2.0 medium to be at a certain level? Can this be done at all without ending up loosing, as realclimate did, a non-mainstream but extremely well-informed member like McIntyre? Would such a site have to, like Spencer's site, pretty much limit the discussion either to inane comments on a main poster or a discussion only among a selected elite? And although such issues are mainly a concern for online, similar issues exist in physical forums for dialogue and for online sites like Wikipedia which are meant to reach a certain caliber but have no real central moderation at all? Are there thoughts others have related to this?
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
To sort of help clarify the kind of trade-offs I'm talking about, I have another contrast.

A Forum that Time (and I) Forgot- more or less

So long ago that I had forgotten this wasn't my first forum, I was a member of a now extinct forum on...well...chemistry topics like nitration, deflagration, detonation, etc. Without getting into too much detail, one of the reasons it is no longer round is, if memory serves, because after 9/11 web hosts were not interested in hosting it. I enjoyed the forum because usually the level of dialogue was quite technical and the main members and moderators were professional chemists, graduate students, etc. More importantly, something I had forgotten until today about that forum was the moderation. The moderators were merciless. Because a site that discusses topics in science that would interest a lot of people who couldn't care less about science but liked the idea of e.g., synthesizing the central ingredient in most HE or particular mixtures for fireworks that were the best for various colors, there were a lot of posts which were clearly written by people who didn't know what they were talking about. Worse, such members usually were only after instructions to tell them how to do things that would probably ensure they lost appendages and damaged property. Usually, such posts were met with a scathing warning and moved to a "graveyard" thread designed just for this purpose (putting in threads that were worthy of ridicule to permanently mark with shame those who had really misunderstood the nature of the forum). Frequently a second infraction resulted in banning. Posters that wrote something deemed not quite "graveyard" level of ill-informed, but still uninformed, were trashed by more elite members and moderators alike. The message was "if you aren't sure you know what you are talking about, you don't and don't waste our time". It was tremendously effective at ensuring a higher quality discourse, and people who did not know but really were interested in the topics could learn a lot by reading the conversations of others, but it certainly didn't encourage people to participate.

There are no stupid questions. So what kind of questions do stupid people ask?

Contrast the immediate above to my last example. I'll base it on a forum I was a member of that wasn't too different (in terms of what topics were discussed) from this one. However, it was significantly smaller and attracted a much less diverse crowd than here or at other larger forums. Because I don't want to say things about an actual forum, I'll describe one similar to the forum I had experience with. Imagine a "modern issues in culture, politics, and religions" forum that had a 80% of members also belonging to multiple hardcore conspiracy websites. Imagine that the moderators were highly intelligent but non-mainstream thinkers. To give something more concrete, imagine the only two trained and credentialed historians who think we don't have enough evidence to say Jesus was a historical person, hardcore climate skeptics with peripheral degrees who we always read about on anti-AGW websites, ID proponents with relevant degrees like Behe, and other such extreme examples of fringe positions but held by those who are still intelligent, critical, and highly educated. Now imagine that they are trying to create a place that attracts not just the mainstream views but also informed opinions from those whose views are derided, dismissed, mocked, etc. A noble goal. There's just one problem: there's a reason views that are so against the mainstream are dismissed. The few "out there" scholars whose are highly educated and intelligent yet believe that the work of just about everyone else in some field is wrong are few and far between. But there are many, many, many, people who do not know what they are talking about but do hold the same extreme views (to be fair, probably everybody isn't informed regarding something they hold to be true and are following what they believe is the view of experts). If you want an exchange of dialogue but you don't want a place for rational discussions on diverse topics to turn into the equivalent of a conspiracy site, do you not need something more than the typical moderation?

In this example, the approach used in the other forum wouldn't work. You cannot attract varied minds and ideas by ruling with an iron fist, IMO. It may work when you are mainly looking to discuss things of a rather technical and quite specific nature, but a forum that welcomes both mainstream and (more importantly) non-mainstream views on current issues cannot expect to get only members like Richard Carrier, Robert Price, Vincent Gray, Michael Behe, William Dembski, Paul Feyerabend, etc. So what's the answer? Is there one?
 

Slapstick

Active Member
Moderating a blog? I don’t see a problem with people having alternative opinions as long as they understand the topic that is being discussed. If the topic for instance, is on a blog and is a controversial topic then it would only be normal to expect some differing views and opinions. I have never created a blog, but if I did and wanted to avoid controversy that may follow a controversial topic then the first entry would probably be a disclaimer explaining the purpose and intentions of the blog. However, a intended purpose entry would be just that: the intended purpose.

For example: Intel may have strict policies in place for people who work at Intel. So say, someone that works for Intel wanted to create a blog. They would have to provide a disclaimer that states their views and opinions do not reflect that of Intel. That is corporate example. Another example that isn’t corporate or intended to promote a business would be, say, someone that wanted point out the problems with a theory or explain its strengths and weakness. Then later propose why alternative theories are stronger than the original. A simple disclaimer would be describing the intentions of the post.

I’m not well versed in the blogosphere so I wouldn’t know how moderation works when it comes to monitoring people’s comments or posts. I guess it really depends on what you intend or expect to get out of it.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Moderating a blog?
I'm not well acquainted with the blogosphere in general but I do follow some rather popular blogs. Although there is usually only one or maybe a few people blogging, the comments are very much akin to discussions. This is especially true when several blogs and their followers are connected.




I’m not well versed in the blogosphere so I wouldn’t know how moderation works when it comes to monitoring people’s comments or posts. I guess it really depends on what you intend or expect to get out of it.
I wasn't limiting it to blogs. There are other places, like forums, where people get together to discuss everything from learning Greek and Latin to politics to linguistics, or sites for artists/writers where people can share their work but also discuss and share ideas, or similar sites for academics, or even chatrooms, gaming sites and Wikipedia (which involves self-moderation and two distinct levels- edits to pages and discussion pages about suggestions, issues, resolutions, etc., regarding particular pages). It's one thing if an forum is one something highly technical and strict moderation doesn't really keep anybody other than spammers out because nobody can follow the topic who isn't genuinely interested, but what kind of factors/trade-offs go into trying raise the quality of posts if necessary that doesn't end up cutting off (at least potentially) valuable contributors?
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
On my own blog, I reserve the right to delete any comment I find inflamatory, lying, or misleading. I don't figure I'm suppressing anyone's free speech because, if they want to express such an opinion, they can get their own blog to do it on.
 

Slapstick

Active Member
I'm not well acquainted with the blogosphere in general but I do follow some rather popular blogs. Although there is usually only one or maybe a few people blogging, the comments are very much akin to discussions. This is especially true when several blogs and their followers are connected.
Well blogs can be one-sided and bias to say the least. Although even if someone were to pose a differing opinion on one, such as your climate examples, I wouldn't see the need to monitor other peoples comments. I don't know all the details, but based on some random stuff I just read it seems the two had it out for one another and hashing it out on an opposing persons blog probably isn't the best way to go about doing it. Anyways, moving beyond blogs.

I wasn't limiting it to blogs. There are other places, like forums, where people get together to discuss everything from learning Greek and Latin to politics to linguistics, or sites for artists/writers where people can share their work but also discuss and share ideas, or similar sites for academics, or even chatrooms, gaming sites and Wikipedia (which involves self-moderation and two distinct levels- edits to pages and discussion pages about suggestions, issues, resolutions, etc., regarding particular pages). It's one thing if an forum is one something highly technical and strict moderation doesn't really keep anybody other than spammers out because nobody can follow the topic who isn't genuinely interested, but what kind of factors/trade-offs go into trying raise the quality of posts if necessary that doesn't end up cutting off (at least potentially) valuable contributors?
I know there are different types of forums. I occasionally debate on a pure science forum. It is where I go when I want to specifically debate or discuss science related stuff with others who range from college students, to those with higher degrees and are well experienced in different fields ranging from philosophy, chemistry, physics, and technology. And who are technically savvy, and work at Silicon Valley. They have a similar system as the graveyard you mentioned. It is where all the stupid posts go so everyone can look at how idiotic some of the things random people say. Although the level of debates can range from someone being an average person wanting to learn more to experienced and well educated people. Usually problems work themselves out very quickly.

So ideally I think a public forum should allow for as much freedom as possible, yet remain in the confines of the sites intended purpose. However, I don't see this as a problem of freedom vs. moderation. Mainly because blogs and sometimes forums can be extremely biased. It may have nothing to do with the moderation but with the community itself or it could have to do with both.

I'm currently researching technology and social media for a term project I am wrapping up. It is on BYOD (bring your device) where students K-12 are being allowed to bring their laptops, cellphones and other mobile devices to class to aid them in research, develop critical thinking skills, learn how to use and manage their devices, take responsibility for them and so on and so forth. They are using social media to help facilitate classroom participation and learning as well. They are all thrilled about it and based on some of the things I have learn is that when people share a common interest or are allowed to work together in a collaborative effort they tend to get along and get more stuff done. This has been proven to be the case with big corporate businesses too such as Google.

So in an open forum that has no control (moderation) I would say even total freedom wouldn't be ideal. Simply allowing people to hash out their differences isn't going to develop into a meaningful or logical debate. In fact, I think the more opinionated people are the more it stifles it.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I'm currently researching technology and social media for a term project I am wrapping up. It is on BYOD (bring your device) where students K-12 are being allowed to bring their laptops, cellphones and other mobile devices to class to aid them in research, develop critical thinking skills, learn how to use and manage their devices, take responsibility for them and so on and so forth. They are using social media to help facilitate classroom participation and learning as well. They are all thrilled about it and based on some of the things I have learn is that when people share a common interest or are allowed to work together in a collaborative effort they tend to get along and get more stuff done. This has been proven to be the case with big corporate businesses too such as Google.
Could you elaborate a bit on this? In addition to being relevant, it also sounds extremely interesting.
 

nilsz

bzzt
I think part of the problem is that traditional Internet discussion formats create power imbalances between administrators and users. I am interested in a type of Internet forum that does away with that, and as a programmer of sorts I have given this quite a bit of thought.

What I imagined was that a forum would be distributed across a network of nodes (akin to Usenet), and require no central authorities because all posts, revisions and moderations are digitally signed (either through something like public key cryptography or URLs).

Moderation would be opt-in, and individual users could pick and choose what moderations they would apply. A consequence is that any moderation would at least to some degree be transparent, and that it would be, for good-or-worse, hard to completely suppress a post.

(If moderation messages hash IDs of posts to be censored it would make it difficult to figure out what posts are being censored unless you know their IDs beforehand. I imagine that this technique would be useful in suppressing child pornography and other material that people widely agree is harmful. Censored messages could still technically be distributed across nodes that opt-out of this censorship.)
 

Slapstick

Active Member
Could you elaborate a bit on this? In addition to being relevant, it also sounds extremely interesting.
Sure, I can talk about it on a market level, business level and enterprise level, but will stick with market and education.

So the markets are driven by consumers and thus we have the term IT Consumerization. Which basically means consumers of IT products want to use them whenever and wherever they want. This market also includes younger generations of people. Children at a younger age are starting to get smartphones, laptops, tablets and other wireless and mobile devices. A good percentage of them already own such devices before they enter Kindergarten. Last I checked and it is now an outdated study, because when I do research or field research and use white papers or other case studies as well they can not be any older than 2 years old, because that is how fast technology and things change, but almost 37% K-2 already own a notebook and 21% already own some type of cellphone as of 2010. And the percentages greatly increase after K-2. Even a two year old can use a tablet. http://webobjects.cdw.com/webobjects...s/K12-BYOD.pdf <-- You can read this white paper for more information on BYOD and view the statistics of people that use mobile devices as of 2010.

So, instead of schools (in the area I studied) discipling students for bringing those devices to class they are now allowing students to use them. So IT Consumerization affects policies as well especially on a business level. So schools are essentially forced to allow students to bring them to class. However, there are a lot of benefits in doing this. For one, a school no longer has to pay for a computer, software and maintenance for every single classroom and student. When you think about how many students can be at one school and in a distract that is a lot of money that is saved. Also, it helps bring the 21st century to the classroom and break away from the traditional classroom setting and curriculum. So schools can invest in other things like infrastructure. It also opens the door for teachers to bring different programs, applications and social media sites into the classroom to help facilitate teaching and learning.

One of the social media sites is called Edmodo. It is just like facebook, but is intended for the classroom and targeted at those K-12. Students can collaborate on projects and the teachers can use touch screens to take polls for different reasons. Say the teacher has a few options of what he or she would like to cover or talk about. Well they can take a poll from the class and display the results on a touchscreen instantly. Teachers can use it to post related course material and tutorials or help students. It also tracks and monitors students progress and grades. Parents can use the site as well to monitor their childs progress to see what they are doing, how they are participating, grades and other things like that. There are several other programs that are being used and that is just one. Some programs work on reward points and if the class does good for example on say homework or quizzes they might have a special event,like a pizza party or do something fun. They can also get points docked off so it encourages students to get involved and engage in the classroom. But they are already eager too just by simply being able to bring their devices to class. Another interesting feature is that when students take quizzes the teacher can instantly display the results as well to see how many students got it right and how many got it wrong. It doesn't display specific information like names or anything like that.

BYOD is also organic in growth so a few teachers may start out by adopting the program and later other teachers begin to use it. The reason why it is broken down like that is to find out what works and what doesn't and get feedback from students, parents, advisors, and others. They also look at other statistical information. It tends to increase students test scores and participation in the class and on homework or research outside of class.

Usually traditional curriculum is broken down and based on standardized testing. BYOD allows teachers to incorporate more content into the classes in an interactive learning environment suited for the 21st century. Students that may not be able to afford a mobile device usually collaborates or shares with others that have them and the schools are also starting to setup affordable plans to help parents. All they need is the device the school provides Internet access. Students then learn things like etiquette, how to use their devices, secure them, sites that are appropriate for them to use, be responsible for them, because they aren't the schools responsibility, but schools provide ways for students to keep them safe while they are not being used such as lockers of course. They work on group projects and it really just goes on and on.

Then BYOD is used in the corporate world too. This is all I could really think atm because I'm kind of tired. LoL If that didn't answer any of your question just ask.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Sure, I can talk about it on a market level, business level and enterprise level, but will stick with market and education.

So the markets are driven by consumers and thus we have the term IT Consumerization. Which basically means consumers of IT products want to use them whenever and wherever they want. This market also includes younger generations of people. Children at a younger age are starting to get smartphones, laptops, tablets and other wireless and mobile devices. A good percentage of them already own such devices before they enter Kindergarten. Last I checked and it is now an outdated study, because when I do research or field research and use white papers or other case studies as well they can not be any older than 2 years old, because that is how fast technology and things change, but almost 37% K-2 already own a notebook and 21% already own some type of cellphone as of 2010. And the percentages greatly increase after K-2. Even a two year old can use a tablet. http://webobjects.cdw.com/webobjects...s/K12-BYOD.pdf <-- You can read this white paper for more information on BYOD and view the statistics of people that use mobile devices as of 2010..

Thank you very much for this. I'm going to be looking into it. It sounds like a brilliant solution. I recall some clip someone showed me that involved the kids building a virtual environment to learn (if memory serves) concepts relating to physics and engineering and things like that. There are a lot of electronic learning methods I'm not a fan of (most are for parents who, not knowing any better, believe that Baby Einstein is going to really make their child a genius), but there are extraordinary resources out there and others just waiting to be developed (and most that exist I am sure I don't know about). Time was putting computers in classes and having kids watch instructional shows just ensured low attention spans and the need to have information fed to them rather than actively achieved. That time is past. For one thing, I'm not surprised at all by the stats on devices as they were a constant nuisance when I was teaching. I would kill for better ways to have students use these to facilitate learning. All I could do was try to find a use for the devices that usually wasn't ideal but at least stopped the students from using them to tune out. Laptops/tablets are vital for college students and rather than exploit their educational potential some professors don't even allow them in class, much less teachers in high school.

When I worked for a test prep company, all the homework was online in the students' personalized virtual classrooms. There were clips, homework assignments & quizzes that offered hints to prevent the student from just giving up on the question, and perhaps best of all the system automatically adjusted itself to the students level. In fact, after each teaching session in every class we broke the students up into groups so that they could work on problems themselves and teach one another. The program automatically told me how proficient each student was so that I could group them accordingly and assign each group the practice material that was for their level. However, nobody thought that maybe it would be good to incorporate that wonderful virtual classroom into the physical classroom, causing a divide between the kind of works students did for preparation at home and the kind of work they did in class.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I think part of the problem is that traditional Internet discussion formats create power imbalances between administrators and users.
True enough, although I don't see how this can be avoided. I could be wrong, but I don't think that the kind of emergent social networks behind e.g., Wikipedia would work elsewhere. It took a long time to work well on Wikipedia, and although it is now a terrific resource the fact that the discussion is much more limited and any malicious edits can be immediately removed makes it rather different than an online forum or similar site.

I am interested in a type of Internet forum that does away with that, and as a programmer of sorts I have given this quite a bit of thought.

Excellent! I hope you'll continue to share.

What I imagined was that a forum would be distributed across a network of nodes (akin to Usenet), and require no central authorities because all posts, revisions and moderations are digitally signed (either through something like public key cryptography or URLs).

What, apart from identifying a particular computer, would the digital signatures do such central moderation wasn't needed? I'm not sure I follow. Also, aren't don't forums already distributed networks? Or does the fact that even though all the members are autonomous nodes the sites themselves are hosted on one server make this not the case? What I know of computer networking was ever satisfactory and has degraded over time. The last thing I read on distributed networks in computing was on graph algorithms, not the networks themselves, so I freely admit this isn't an area I know too much about apart from the few places it overlaps with my work.

Moderation would be opt-in, and individual users could pick and choose what moderations they would apply. A consequence is that any moderation would at least to some degree be transparent, and that it would be, for good-or-worse, hard to completely suppress a post.

Do you think that such a system would be unlikely to develop the kind of dialogue that we can find in e.g., the ol' IIRC or in youtube comments where perhaps a majority of them are vulgar, add nothing to anything, and/or are personal attacks? If memory serves, that's why some usenet newsgroups were moderated. Ignoring network security, would you worry in your set up about trolling, flaming, spamming, or (using your example) even illegal data sharing such as child pornography?

Last question:
How much would the nature of the discussion group's focus effect the feasibility of the structure you suggest? In my second post, I gave two examples of different types of forums with different focuses and different set-ups (including in terms of moderation styles). Of course, I'm not by any means suggesting that the styles/set-up used by either was good or necessary, but the type of focus each discussion board had did influence the moderation was organized and applied. How, if at all, would that be true in the structure you suggest?
 

nilsz

bzzt
Digital signatures enable us to verify that a message come from a given digital identity (not computer) without depending on a central authority. Hosting of a traditional forum may be distributed, but unlike in this setup, not to anyone that the administrators do not trust to not tamper with the forum. This trust is not needed when all data is digitally signed, and all code is in the individual clients.

Being able to distribute the hosting of a forum outside of a central authority is important so that these administrators do not have absolute control over something their members have invested a lot in.

The digital signatures can be used to confirm that a moderation message originates from someone whose moderation the user defers to. Moderation messages can be in the form of "hide this post with a warning about its content", "ignore all posts from this identity for given reason", "include posts from this identity in this particular discussion group" or "defer to the moderation of this other identity". Because moderation is transparent, the user can be notified by their client when moderations are in effect and undo it as they please. They can also choose to reinterpret the moderation to, for instance, only be in effect in certain discussion groups, or to completely omit any notification of moderation when the moderation is corroborrated by multiple identities.

A forum essentially becomes a set of shared, digitally signed files, and their users' interpretation of them.

I think this kind of platform is difficult to apply to, first of all, forums where privacy or exclusivity is important, as data cannot trivially be deleted and because of the built-in automation for distributing messages widely.
 

Slapstick

Active Member
Thank you very much for this. I'm going to be looking into it. It sounds like a brilliant solution. I recall some clip someone showed me that involved the kids building a virtual environment to learn (if memory serves) concepts relating to physics and engineering and things like that. There are a lot of electronic learning methods I'm not a fan of (most are for parents who, not knowing any better, believe that Baby Einstein is going to really make their child a genius), but there are extraordinary resources out there and others just waiting to be developed (and most that exist I am sure I don't know about). Time was putting computers in classes and having kids watch instructional shows just ensured low attention spans and the need to have information fed to them rather than actively achieved. That time is past. For one thing, I'm not surprised at all by the stats on devices as they were a constant nuisance when I was teaching. I would kill for better ways to have students use these to facilitate learning. All I could do was try to find a use for the devices that usually wasn't ideal but at least stopped the students from using them to tune out. Laptops/tablets are vital for college students and rather than exploit their educational potential some professors don't even allow them in class, much less teachers in high school.

When I worked for a test prep company, all the homework was online in the students' personalized virtual classrooms. There were clips, homework assignments & quizzes that offered hints to prevent the student from just giving up on the question, and perhaps best of all the system automatically adjusted itself to the students level. In fact, after each teaching session in every class we broke the students up into groups so that they could work on problems themselves and teach one another. The program automatically told me how proficient each student was so that I could group them accordingly and assign each group the practice material that was for their level. However, nobody thought that maybe it would be good to incorporate that wonderful virtual classroom into the physical classroom, causing a divide between the kind of works students did for preparation at home and the kind of work they did in class.
Also, just thought I would say this. When I used the word “touch screen” that teacher’s use I was actually referring to smart boards, I just called it a touchscreen. They also take advantage of other things too, like QR (quick response) codes. They may be on posters dispersed throughout the school and students can scan them with their smartphones to get information related to the announcement. It is just crazy some of the things they come up with for education. This is the social media site I was talking about: https://www.edmodo.com/

Some things also seem like they should already be a basic necessity when it comes to teaching, but some are just slow to adopt new technologies. It seems like a smart board should be at least be in every classroom making it easier to adopt a BYOD strategy. Along with other things like a microscope connected to a computer to display on the smart board for a biology lab.
 
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