Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Proposal: homeschooling & afterschooling section

I'm interested too.

I would like to see a homeschool section.

I'm opposed. There is already no problem posting threads about homeschooling (and virtual schooling, which may or may not be regarded as homeschooling) in the "Learning Environments" forum. Often people are trying to get informed and to decide about a range of "Learning Environment" options, of which homeschooling may be one, but public, private, virtual are other options. It's better to keep the "Learning Environments" comparisons in one place rather than fragmenting into subforums.

One alternative is a sticky "clearinghouse" thread which contains links to extant (or newly created) threads on the topic.

That makes it VERY easy to search for/locate threads on a common topic.

An excellent alternative, HK. How intensive would maintenance be on the moderator side to achieve comparable updating to a subforum?

Basically, the only maintenance would be user-driven. In the forum that I help run, the problem with sub-fora is that they tend to need periodic housekeeping in order to move threads into them from the general forum that houses the sub-forum (which is where most of those threads are started, because: a) they get more traffic, and b) newer members may not even notice a sub-forum, depending on the layout and specs of the message board).

The advantage that user-driven maintenance has from a moderation standpoint in a forum like this one is pretty clear.

Basically, whomever wants to can post in that sticky thread, and add links to other threads within the forum that are informative or deal with the question or related matters.

Nice thing about that system is also that cross-referencing is possible to posts/threads which were made in OTHER sub-fora and resources outside of the message board itself, even. A sort of "ultimate" thread with a particular informative purpose, if you will.

I would love a separate section too

I always want to ask something HS related and then I don't because I don't want to make it look like I'm flooding the section with HS topics. So I'm sure it would get a lot of traffic!

I think the curriculum recs go in reccomended resources, do they not? But if you're going to sticky a thread for homeschooling shouldn't there be one in each of the age/grades subforums. The parents of littles have a different time than the parents of teens. The highschool and college subforums are comapratively bare, but there are some parents of those aged kids here. I usually take longer debating which subforum to use than constructing the post when I make a new topic.

:nodding:

Yes, Tex-- that's the beauty of a 'clearinghouse' or 'indexing' thread-- you can add links to threads that are all over the boards, and it's less problematic to have a thread that is in one forum but could have gone in any one of three.

KWIM?

It just takes time to construct them, but it's something that any member that is familiar with HTML BB-tags can do. No moderator maintenance needed!