Tag Archives: email

My Resources

Canned Response: Impolite Student

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Rude BehaviourIn my dual role as ICT Coordinator and Teacher of ICT, I receive a lot of emails from students, invariably asking for help with some aspect of their computing environment. Whilst the majority of these responses are polite and well written, a there are those that are so informal they border on rude. In the past I have written an individual response to such students asking them to rewrite their message with the application of some manners.

I feel that this is the least I can do in the pursuit of raising students who are polite and able to interact positively with others. After several years of this, I have finally gotten around to creating a canned response for dealing with such cases. Hopefully students will get both the message, and the humour intended. So, at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man:

Dear Esteemed Student,

Thank you for your recent email, in which you very concisely requested my help in relation to your educational and/or computing needs. Whilst your email has many redeeming features, such as its small on-screen footprint and low storage requirements, it lacked one especially critical element: manners.

In my experience there are certain social conventions to which one should adhere when asking for help with something. This is especially vital in cases where you actually hope for the person being asked (me, in this case) to agree to the act being requested (helping you).

To start with, it is best to begin your message with a polite greeting (Dear Mr. Parker). Having opened in this polite fashion, you may wish to pursue a little small talk (How are you, my esteemed teacher and guide? I do hope your cat Mr. Evil has recovered from his nasty turn and subsequent operation). Whilst small talk is strictly optional, some people find it to be a suitable social lubricant, aiding us all in the business of getting things done.

After stating your request in a polite manner it is best to end with an expression of gratitude (Thank you in advance for your kind help), before finally signing off (Regards, A. Student).

Seeing as most of your teachers were born prior to the invention of the World Wide Web (1991), and the subsequent downfall of polite social intercourse, you may also wish to consider using appropriate capitalisation and punctuation, whilst simultaneously restricting your use of TLAs (that’s Three Letter Acronyms BTW. OMG IRL I PWN TLAs N00B, LOL!!!).

If you are serious about receiving my help, please take just a little time to rewrite your original email with the aim of bringing it into line with these traditional norms of polite human interaction. I am sure that, with such a request in hand, I will gladly undertake to help you with your every ICT need.

Kind regards,

Mr. Parker

Image Credit: Rude Behaviour image by cisc1970 on Flickr, shared under CC BY-NC.

My Resources, Thoughts

Communication Comparison

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TelegraphAs ICT and media tools have become more and more integrated into our lives, certain limitations have become extremely apparent. This is especially true in terms of the ability of ICT tools to facilitate communication between individuals and groups. To give but one example, consider the tendency for email to accelerate our pace of work, which can in turn lead it to become an overpowering menace. One result of this process has been the development of a raft of new tools, all of which aim to overcome the failings of more conventional tools. As a result we are now in possession of literally hundreds of communication tools, each of which has its own peculiarities. Whilst users can sometimes see that these tools fit into broader categories (such as social networking), often they lack the language and depth of knowledge to really determine the properties that will make a tool fit for a given task.

Having spent a number of years thinking about such systems, their strengths and limitations, I have decided to try and codify this into a chart, with the hope that it might add clarity to a confusing topic. The result, shown below, is by no means exhaustive, nor is it definitive or final: rather, it is a starting point around which teachers, students and parents can start to think and talk about this issue. Although some of the language might be technical, hopefully it is relatively accessible to all (to help in this, the column headers at the top of the page can be clicked on for more information. You may access and comment on the full version of the chart, or use the embed below (it is a little small):

Credits: telegraph thumbnail image by Struthious Bandersnatch on Wikipedia, under the public domain.

Thoughts

Your Work: Dead or Alive?

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The following tweet landed on my feed this morning, and it really got me thinking. I so often try to tackle printing as an environmental issue, that I forget the fact that it is, in many ways, simply an inferior way to work.

This led me to compose the following email to my colleagues, as an opening salvo in a new offensive against the poor practice of printing:

Colleagues, you all know that I am opposed to printing. But there is more to it than just environmentalism.

If you want to think of your work as “living” (eg actively used, collaborative, flexible, responsive, meaningful) then why consign it to static paper? Why not share your work online, build an audience and set your work free. Put it in a blog, or an online document, invite commentary, make everyone an owner.

This is the future of knowledge for our students. Lead by example. Paper is a dead end. Isn’t it time to upgrade?

Fortunately Chris Betcher put his thoughts down in a shared, digital environment, and so we are all able to make use of them. Imagine if he just printing them out, and filed them away.

Other Resources

Snopes: Urban Legends Reference

www.snopes.com

Snopes is a fantastic website that has gathered together a massive number of urban legends, hoaxes and scams and provides information on their validity and origins. Think of it as Mythbusters for the web.

Whenever a concerned acquaintance forwards me an email telling me that aspartame will kill me, or that Bill Gates will give me money or that I should stop using my microwave, the first thing I do is check for a known hoax on Snopes. I then email the link back to the sender, and ask them to consider checking the validity of emails before forwarding them on.

In terms of schooling, Snopes provides students with an informative and fun tool for learning skills of information literacy and critical thinking. Try gathering together a set of emails and get students to guess which might be hoaxes: then get them to use Snopes to see how they did. Discuss with them the reasons why such legends become ingrained and accepted as true, and how they can protect themselves from them. For older students, get them to consider the validity of Snopes itself: can they find other sources to verify or counter the claims made on the site? Finally, students might be asked to consider the philosophical questions of “Can we be sure of anything?” and “What is truth?”.

I think my favourite Snopes moment of all time was when I learned that, contrary to popular belief, Bobby McFerrin (the composer of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”) had in fact not committed suicide. From that day, I have become much less believing in things I read and hear, especially on the web.

Other Resources

Hivelogic – The Enkoder

http://hivelogic.com/enkoder

Spam bots crawl the web looking for email addresses which they can harvest for their evil overlords. This means that posting your email address online can lead directly to an increase in the amount of spam you receive. The Enkoder helps protect email address by encrypting them with JavaScript, effectively hiding them from spam bots, but allowing them to be read by humans.

Other Resources

Thunderbird

http://mozilla.com/thunderbird/

Thunderbird is an email client available for Windows, Linux and Mac. Built by Mozilla, it provides a clean, easy-to-use system for managing email on the desktop. With advanced spam filtering and search, as well as the ability to add in calendering (which can be synced with Google Calendars), it is a great hub for staying organised. I really love the intelligent feature that reminds you to add an attachment to emails that should have one.