Women's Equity Resource Center

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EdEquity User's Guide

What Is Educational Equity?
Educational equity refers to an educational environment in which individuals can consider options and make choices based on their abilities and talents, not on the basis of stereotypes, biased expectations, or discrimination. The EdEquity online discussion is a forum to discuss educational equity issues.

EdEquity's goal is to provide a supportive online environment in which those working toward educational equity can share resources and strategies, explore equity issues, and connect educational equity research and practice. This includes the following:

Encouraging the exchange of ideas and practice among diverse groups of people who wish to explore gender equity in education.
Exploring, within the educational context, the intersections of gender with race, ethnicity, class, and disability.
Providing opportunities for professional development in the form of structured discussions and panels/presentations by experts in the field.
Promoting the identification and sharing of resources that support the work of educators, equity advocates, administrators, and other policymakers.
Assisting parents and students to explore equity issues in education in order to become informed "consumers" and leaders.
Promoting ongoing conversations to deepen understanding of equity issues based on the lessons learned by those participating in the discussion.

Who Participates?
EdEquity is designed to encourage discussion between teachers and other educators, equity practitioners, advocates, parents, counselors, and others interested in equity. The participation of both women and men is welcomed. The list assumes a basic commitment to the principles of educational equity as defined above.

What Do We Discuss?
EdEquity serves as a forum to discuss how to attain equity for males and females, and how gender equity can be a helpful construct for improving education for all. Topics for discussion include, but are not limited to, classroom interactions, curriculum development, school environment, education reform, violence prevention, math and science education, vocational and nontraditional education, school-to-work issues, community-based learning, and counseling. This list gives people a safe environment in which to ask questions and exchange information about teaching strategies, useful texts and films, innovative programs, current research, and funding sources.

In your first posting, please introduce yourself to the list, describing your work and goals.

Message Format

Relate your message to some aspect of educational equity.
Make sure to use descriptive headings in the "Subject" line so that others will know if that topic interests them.
ALWAYS put your name and e-mail address at the end of each of your postingsso that people can identify you and respond to you privately if they wish.
When replying to someone else's message, include only a few lines of their original message as a reference to illustrate a particular point if necessary. Do not reprint the entire message.
To allow for broad participation from the members of the list, subscribers are limited to TWO messages per DAY. If you send in more than two messages, only the first two messages will be considered for posting. Subsequent messages over the limit will be returned to the subscriber indicating that they are over the two message limit. Messages can be re-submitted at a later date.
In the interests of promoting a safe environment for healthy exchange of ideas and clear respect for other list subscribers, postings should focus on issues, strategies, questions, etc., rather than on individuals. Ongoing disagreements that do not promote a deeper understanding or exploration of issues or strategies will be discouraged.
Subscribers are encouraged to list resources (materials, organizations, references, etc.),educational and/or equity conference announcements, job openings and advertisements for relevant resources. However, please keep in mind the following:

Resources—Include the title, publisher, address, phone and fax numbers, etc. and a brief description and/or opinion of the resource. These may be combined with other announcements of resources by the moderator and posted as weekly resource compilation. The list moderator does not review or guarantee the quality of the resources shared by list subscribers.

Conferences—Include basic information about date, location, and sponsoring organizations, but do not send registration forms, housing information, or schedules. Include contact persons for those interested in finding out more. These announcements may be compiled with similar announcements and posted as a weekly compilation.

Job Openings—Send information on job openings as long as the position has some connection to educational equity. The wish to reach more female candidates is not an adequate reason to post non-educational equity positions.

Advertising—List and discuss resources available from your organization if recently available or relevant to a current discussion on the list. However, advertisements for professional services—particularly those unrelated to educational equity—are inappropriate.

If you are unsure whether to post a message, contact the list administrator at EdEquity-admin@mail.edc.org.

Copyrighted materials—List members cannot post copyrighted materials on EdEquity without permission of the author. However, brief one-two paragraph summaries of articles or other materials with links to the entire piece may be posted.

Lobbying Restrictions— Federal regulations significantly restrict nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations from using federal funds for lobbying. EdEquity, a project of EDC funded through a contract with the U.S. Department of Education, cannot therefore be used for lobbying purposes. "Lobbying" refers to activities that attempt to influence legislation, elections, referendums, or initiatives through communication with any member or employee of Congress, state legislators or government officials; the preparation or distribution of propaganda, or encouragement of the public to contribute to or participate in any mass demonstration, fundraising, lobbying campaign, letter writing, or telephone campaign; and in-kind or cash contributions, endorsement, or publicity. These restrictions apply to activities on the federal, state, and local level. Informational messages about the content of pending legislation on educational equity issues are appropriate to send to EdEquity as long as they do not urge people to take action. For example, the message may include the name of an organizational contact ("For more information about this legislation, contact ________.") but may not encourage subscribers to contact their representatives or include target lists of specific members of the legislative body. Additionally, federal regulations prohibit nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations from becoming involved in electoral politics. During election cycles, IRS policies govern such communications as contacting candidates for their positions on issues and publicizing those positions. Communications by nonprofit organizations with any presidential or other electoral candidates must comply with particular rules.

Tips

Please keep the length of your posting to the equivalent of one or two screens. Longer messages are difficult to read in this format and the points you wish to make will be lost. Conciseness is valued.
A technique to efficiently share resources: if you have received messages responding to a query that others may be interested in, consider compiling the info and posting it to the list as one message.
When requesting information from other subscribers it is especially important to include your e-mail address for other subscribers to reply privately to you. Please note that some electronic mail systems indicate that messages are from EdEquity rather than give the "return address" of the sender. In those systems, the sender's information is lost if not included in the body of the message.
When the contents of your message are likely to be of interest to a number of subscribers, it is appropriate to send it to the entire list. However, if you are writing, for example, to request a copy of something another subscriber has mentioned, please send your request privately, not to EdEquity. Similarly, comments directed at a particular person –approval or disapproval—that do not further contribute to the discussion should be sent privately, for example, "Bravo!", "I totally disagree", or "That's the way!" Public appreciation statements ("I would like to commend the fine work of. . . ") are acceptable if related to educational equity and addressed to the audience of subscribers.
Remember that not everyone on EdEquity has extensive experience on the Internet and they may not understand some conventions that seem second nature to you. Please explain items in your messages fully.

Moderated List
In a "moderated list" messages are not automatically posted to the entire list when they are sent by a list member. Each message must be read and approved for posting by the list administrator. This list is administrated jointly by Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), and the WEEA Equity Resource Center at EDC. In overseeing this public mailing list, EDC reserves the right to delete and archive messages, use the archives for research purposes, delete memberships, and take other actions it deems responsible, desirable, or necessary to take. The administrator reserves the right to carry out these measures.

EDC is not responsible for the content of EdEquity. The moderator does, however, reserve the right to reject messages that do not relate to educational equity, are uncivil or unprofessional in tone, or that are not of general interest to the list subscribers. No message will be rejected for expressing a certain opinion, nor are messages edited for length and content. Messages that are returned will be accompanied by a note explaining why.

In their efforts to share resources, members of EdEquity may post links to other web sites. These sites are not under the control of EDC, and EDC is not responsible for the contents of any of these sites. Such postings do not imply the endorsement of, sponsorship of, or affiliation with the site by EDC.

If you ever have a question about these guidelines or want to discuss something with the administrator, please send a message to EdEquity-admin@mail.edc.org.

EdEquity Moderator
<edequity-admin@mail.edc.org>
Education Development Center, Inc.
55 Chapel Street
Newton, MA 02458-1060
1(800)225-3088

Computer Commands New Subscribers
New subscribers can familiarize themselves with past discussions by visiting the web site at http://www.edc.org/WomensEquity/edequity/hypermail

Weekly Digest
The weekly digest is a compilation of the week's messages into one jumbo-sized message. Past digests are stored by the Majordomo software and are accessed by sending a message requesting a certain file. To receive an index of files, send the following message to Majordomo@mail.edc.org:

index edequity

To retrieve a particular file from the archives, send the following message to Majordomo@mail.edc.org:

get edequity FileName

To receive EdEquity messages as the weekly digest, send the following in the body of your message to Majordomo@mail.edc.org. Do not use a subject line.

subscribe edequity-digest

If you are already subscribed to the regular mailing list but only want the digest, be sure to unsubscribe by sending this message to Majordomo@mail.edc.org:

unsubscribe edequity

Messages can also be read in HyperNews by thread, author, and date, on our web site at http://www.edc.org/WomensEquity/edequity/hypermail

Replying Privately versus Replying to EdEquity
If you respond to a message received from EdEquity by hitting the reply key, everyone on the mailing list will receive your message.

To respond privately to a message, you must make sure that you put the e-mail address of the subscriber you wish to contact in the "To" line of your reply.

Majordomo versus EdEquity
EdEquity is run by software called Majordomo. EdEquity is an e-mailed ongoing discussion on gender issues.

To change your subscription, send commands to Majordomo@mail.edc.org. Do not send subscription changes to the EdEquity list. An e-mail message sent to EdEquity will be distributed via e-mail to all subscribers of EdEquity.

If you have subscription problems, contact the list administrator at EdEquity-admin@mail.edc.org for assistance.

Some Majordomo commands: Send the command (shown below in italics) in the body of a message without any text in the "subject" Line to Majordomo@edc.org:

to subscribe - subscribe edequity

to unsubscribe - unsubscribe edequity

to subscribe to the digest - subscribe edequity-digest

to unsubscribe from the digest - unsubscribe edequity-digest

to find out who is on the list - who edequity

to retrieve a file - get edequity <filename>

to receive an index of files - index edequity

to retrieve introductory information - info edequity

to show the lists served by this majordomo - lists

Send comments, questions, and concerns to WEEACtr@edc.org.

Gender Equity Works for All

WEEA Equity Resource Center
EDC
55 Chapel Street
Newton, MA 02458-1060

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Site questions and comments:genderdiversities@edc.org