Technology Leadership List Server
The Technology Leadership List has grown to the point where some changes are necessary. The information presented below is provided for all current and prospective subscribers to the list and represents the current status of the list.

The Georgia Department of Education maintains an email discussion list for the use of all K-12 personnel involved in using and supporting the use of Educational Technology and Media in Georgia K-12 Schools. The list has historically been used for distribution of information of widespread interest by the Department of Education to Technology Specialists and other interested parties. It can also be used by list members to request information or assistance from others in the list subscriber community.

The subject of your message may be anything you'd like or it may be left blank if your email program or service provider does not permit blank subjects. In other words, ListServ doesn't care what is in your email subject field.

The body of your message should contain only the following command on a line by itself. Ideally, the message should contain only the one line. If your email program automatically appends a signature, you should turn that feature off for this message if possible.

Subscribe Tech-Leadership-L Jane Doe (Special Co) where first_name and last_name are your actual first and last names and system-name is either your employing school system or position. For example, if your name were Jane Doe and you were an employee if the Special County Board of Education, you would send the command: Subscribe Tech-Leadership-L Jane Doe (Special Co)

If you forget to turn off the signature line or your email program automatically adds additional lines after the command identified above, you may receive some error messages from ListServ but the command should be processed normally.

Changing Your E-mail Address
If you change your email address you will need to Signoff the list and then re-subscribe using your new email account. You must send the Signoff message using the old email account and then send the Subscribe command from the new account. If for some reason, you can no longer access the old account, send an explanatory message to: tech-leadership-l-request@zeus.etcmcn.org requesting assistance.

Sending A Message To All List Subscribers
To send a message to all the people currently subscribed to the list, just send your message to: tech-leadership-l@zeus.etcmsn.org

This is called "sending mail to the list," because you send mail to a single address and ListServ makes copies for all the people who have subscribed. This address is also called the "list address." You must never try to send any command to that address, as it would be distributed to all the people who have subscribed. All commands must be sent to the ListServ address: listserv@zeus.etcmcn.org

It is very important to understand the difference between the two, but fortunately it is not complicated. The ListServ address is like a fax number that connects you to a machine, whereas the list address is like a normal voice line connecting you to a person. If you make a mistake and dial the fax number when you wanted to talk to someone on the phone, you will quickly realize that you used the wrong number and call again. No harm will have been done.

If on the other hand you accidentally make your fax call someone's voice line, the person receiving the call will be inconvenienced, especially if your fax then re-dials every 5 minutes. The fact that most people will eventually connect the fax machine to the voice line to allow the fax to go through and make the calls stop does not mean that you should continue to send faxes to the voice number. People would just get mad at you. It works pretty much the same way with mailing lists, with the difference that you are calling hundreds or thousands of people at the same time, and consequently you can expect a lot of people to get upset if you consistently send commands to the list address.

Contributions sent to this list are automatically archived on a monthly basis. You can get a list of the available archive files by sending the command: Index Tech-Leadership-L to listserv@zeus.etcmcn.org. You can then order these files with a Get Tech-Leadership-L Logxxxx command.

Confirming Commands And Messages
The software we are using to implement the Tech-leadership-L list contains provisions to prevent a user from sending commands or messages impersonating another user. One of the mechanisms is a requirement for confirmation of the commands. You will receive a request for confirmation when you send commands or messages to the list. This request will be sent to the address the email message seems to have originated from and it will contain a special code, sometimes call a "magic cookie," in the subject field of the message. The message you receive will indicate what you are requested to confirm. If you want the action to occur, you must reply to the message within a certain period, indicated in the message, with the word OK. Do not change the subject of the message. If for some reason you do not want the command to be processed or the message distributed to the list, just delete the request for confirmation and no further action will be taken.

If you receive a request for confirmation for a message or command that you did not originate, please send a message to: tech-leadership-l-request@zeus.etcmcn.org and we will research the problem.

General List Etiquette
Messages sent to the list for distribution to all subscribers should be of general interest to the majority of the list members. Personal messages should not normally be distributed this way. If you see a message and wish to respond to it, consider whether your response would be of general interest to other subscribers. If you feel your response would be of general interest, send it to the list address however, if your response is of a personal nature or is of limited usefulness to most list subscribers, it would be best to send your message to the email address of the individual you wish to correspond with.

From time to time, users unfamiliar with email lists may mistakenly send commands to the list or they may even post inappropriate material. Please resist any inclination you might have to reply to them by posting a response to the list address. The resulting exchanges, called "Flames" frequently escalate resulting in "Flame Wars" which are unproductive and can result in participants being banned from the list.

If you have questions about any of the material presented above, please direct your messages to: tech-leadership-l-request@zeus.etcmcn.org