How to Join or Sign-Off of the Middle-L Mailing List:
MIDDLE-L is hosted by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary
and Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois.
http://ericeece.org/listserv/middle-l.html
How to Join or Sign-Off
of the Middle-L Mailing List:
MIDDLE-L is hosted by the ERIC Clearinghouse
on Elementary
and Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois.
http://ericeece.org/listserv/middle-l.html
Special Thanks to Liszt for much of the content on
this page.
Internet mailing lists are discussion groups in which participants share information with a large community of people with similar interests. Participants send one message to the list and it is automatically transmitted to all list members. Lists are usually made up of people discussing their favorite topics by e-mail. For example, middle school teachers can join the free public list, Middle-L, to meet other middle school teachers from all over the world and talk about middle school issues via e-mail.
The mailing list format lends itself to calm, thoughtful, literate, mature discussion, where relationships between the list members actually grow and deepen over an extended period of time. Most Internet experts feel that the mailing list format is the most civilized type of online community.
- Connect to the Internet and open your e-mail program
- Turn off the "signature" in your e-mail. A signature or any other characters will confuse the automated machine receiving your message.
- Begin a "New" mail message.
- Type ONLY the following command into the body of your message: (NOTE: Do not include the quotes, and substitute YOUR real name...of course :-)
subscribe MIDDLE-L "Your First Name" "Your Last Name"
For example: If your name is Jane Smith, your message would read: subscribe MIDDLE-L Jane Smith
- Send your message to the administrative address: LISTSERV@POSTOFFICE.CSO.UIUC.EDU
The automated machine will send a reply to you immediately. Within a few minutes, you should receive a file telling you how to send messages to the actual mailing list: a group of *hundreds* of middle school teachers!. SAVE THIS MESSAGE for later reference. (See Caution about "Common Mistakes" Below!) You can start receiving and sending messages right away, but it's always best to "listen" for a while to the other list members before sending a message to the group.
Middle-L usually generates between 20 - 30 messages each day. If this is too much mail for you, perhaps you should consider the "Digest Option" below. This will allow you to receive only one message containing all postings from a 24 hour period. The digest is conveniently indexed at the top to allow readers to see the subject line of all messages contained in it. If you don't want to read about any of the subjects listed on a given day, you may simply delete the digest. This option is desirable for those who don't want a lot of mail.
If you want to receive one very long digest of all the messages sent in a 24 hour period, you may send the following command to the the administrative address:
set MIDDLE-L digest
Do NOT send your message to the actual listserv address, as this will be sent to all members of the listserv.
NEVER, EVER send commands (digest, subscribe or unsubscribe) to the actual list address! The list address is for the actual discussion with live people. Any mail you send to the MIDDLE-L mailing list will go to everybody who's subscribed to MIDDLE-L. They DON'T want to hear about your attempts to subscribe and unsubscribe! This is THE most common mistake with mailing lists, and it causes untold suffering. Learn the difference between the administrative address and the actual list address! For Middle-L they are easy to remember, because the administrative address *sounds* like a machine: LISTSERV@POSTOFFICE.CSO.UIUC.EDU, while the actual list is...well, you'll have to subscribe to see that! ;-)
How to Sign-Off the Listserv
If you want to leave the listserv for any reason, first turn off your "Signature" option if you use one and send a message to LISTSERV@POSTOFFICE.CSO.UIUC.EDU
Your message should say: SIGNOFF Middle-L
That's it! You should no longer receive messages from the list.
The best resource for this is Liszt, a searchable database of most of the listserv's in the world. You may go to their page to learn all about this resource, or you may search Liszt directly below:
