I would be interested in developing a new mailing list for the National Writing Project. The National Writing Project is a collaborative university/school staff development program to improve the teaching and learning of writing in the nation's classrooms. It is a university-based teacher-centered program. The Project had its start in 1973 at the University of California at Berkeley. Presently there are 161 sites in the U.S. and 5 sites outside in Canada and Europe. Each year at all NWP sites successful teachers of writing from all levels of instruction, elementary school through university, are identified and invited to participate in intensive five-week Summer Institutes. After the Institute these teachers join with other NWP Teacher Consultants who have participated in previous institutes to plan and conduct year-long staff development workshops on the teaching of writing in project-sponsored programs in schools. We are looking to offer opportunities for NWP teachers to hook into the internet. Some teachers and directors already have access through affiliated universities or schools. We are looking for options to connect many more of our teachers. We are most interested in fostering communication via Internet technology and would like to develop a range of discussion forums. I think that a mailing list would greatly enhance our ability to network people through the Internet and begin discussions on how and why such forums could be developed to suit the needs of the users. We have seen such technologies have a great influence within and between NWP sites across the country. Many teachers have already gained access to email accounts, bulletin boards and newsgroups. We would like to broaden the base of teachers who have such resources available to them as well as create a center to which they can share discussion among themselves. The NWP has been developing cross-site networks through the years - there has been urban and rural sites networks - and now a new "Project Outreach" is being developed. This Project Outreach is aimed specifically at improving writing instruction in schools with large numbers of students from low-income backgrounds. It is this outreach project in particular that could greatly benefit from a mailing list that its teachers can freely subscribe to and begin discussions across state boundaries about the development of this project, the use of new communications technologies to facilitate its development, and beyond. Presently I am maintaining the homepage of the National Writing Project (http://www-gse.berkeley.edu/Research/NWP/nwp.html). I would interested in being the moderator of a maillist. After reading several documents that I found on the web, including Diane Kovacs, et al., "How to Start and Manage a Listserve group", I realize that there is time involved in the upkeep of a list, as well as several decisions to be made upon starting one. I still need to discuss further with a colleague about the possibilities of an open/closed list - but I do know that I'd like a "publicly" distributed list that would be moderated as my colleague and I see fit. I have seen that there are many mailing lists for educators, and I have been encouraging members of the Writing Project to subscribe to those which they might be interested. However, in addition, I feel that the NWP is already a strong network(s) of people whom I think would benefit from a centralized mailing list to focus on specific concerns. The name I was thinking about was NWP-L. I don't think that has a duplicate - or at least I haven't found one. Please let me know if you would be interested in sponsoring such a list. Feel free to email me directly with questions, suggestions, problems or concerns. Thank you. Christina Cantrill [log in to unmask]