Hi All,
I'm the District Technology Coordinator for LakeShore Central Schools, (south of Buffalo, NY) I came to QuickTopic to see if this could help my High School teachers in developing discussion topics. Despite all their efforts, it is difficult to provide more activities which elicit student thoughts and discussion. Teachers just run out of time. But the key is students have time available after class to continue THINKING, and hopefully wondering about what they are learning. It often seems we have just enough time to teach the bare facts required for the end of the year state testing, and there isn't much time for the thinking part.

I created a sample to show teachers and get their feedback.
You're welcome to see my "pretend" discussion.
http://www.quicktopic.com/6/H/NcHwZKbnAyAiEd8qjV

Also Steve Yost answered a couple of my initial questions regarding inappropriate usage and Teacher control. [Thanks again, Steve] I've copied his response below.

> How could I as the instructor, remove inappropriate postings?

Click the Admin/Delete link on the topic page, and you'll see a place to
delete specific messages. If you created the topic while signed in, you
won't even have to supply the special "administrative password". Otherwise,
just have it send you an admin password.

> Also, if I
> could type
> Student 1, Student 2 then students could certainly post things
anonymously
> and I
> wouldn't be able to track them down.

That's true, and it's a direct tradeoff for simplicity. I can easily add a
feature that requires students to sign in, if you're interested. However,
there's still nothing preventing them from creating several sign-in names
and using them. That's true of any service. At least with this feature one
student couldn't impersonate another. But effective moderation of the
discussions is the best, I think, it being a human solution.