Push versus pull technology
A listserv is an example of a push technology. If you are a member of the mailing list, a message sent to the list is pushed to your email account. If I am a building administrator and I want all teachers to be aware of something important, this is what I want. I cannot guarantee that each teacher will open the email, but I can be assured that the message will be sent to each teacher. One of the challenges in this situation for large groups is that each member can easily send messages to all other members of the list. If you happen to be a member of several such lists, the volume of messages can become more than you care to process. There is no way to control what shows up in your mail box and to work your way through all of the emails, even if only to open each to see what it contains can take a considerable amount of time. In contrast, pull technology allows the user much greater control over the content that is viewed. So instead of a group sending everything they produce to each other’s email account, members of the group might place this information on a site and organize the information by topic. Individuals members can then visit this site and browse the topics that interest them or search the site to see what is available on a particular topic. Sites perhaps created as a group wiki or a social website such as Ning are ideal for this type of collaboration.
So, you may find yourself making a choice between push and pull communication. This may be a choice that determines how you access the information available from a group or a choice you make for your group; i.e., your class. The choice may involve whether you decide to make use of an e-mail listserv or some other communications tool. If the number of individuals and the amount of information is small, difference between push and pull approaches may not be that substantial. Even if we do not believe that reviewing every message from every member of a group is necessary, the impact on our time if there are only a few messages is not substantial.
There is also the matter of whether you have a responsibility to be aware of the information that is being made available within a group. This might be the case for teachers. Some communications tools that allow individuals to contribute information without forwarding this information to all members of a group do include a provision that notifies the system administrator or host when the site has been changed. The same is true for some listservs. Such systems might be described as moderated because the notification or pass-through function allows the administrator to make supervisory decisions or review decisions regarding the content intended for all members.