Here are some guidelines for effective e-mail

• Don’t Ramble! -  When people sit down to check their e-mail they often have lots of messages and little time.  Don’t tell your life story only to get to the point in the very last sentence.  KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) often works well for e-mail.  No more than five sentences, that’s it!

• Be Careful With E-Mail Directories and pre-defined mailing lists - I’ve seen people I know make this terrible mistake.  When loading up multiple recipients or using a pre-defined mailing list make sure you know who it’s going to!  Double check and re-check the recipients you’ve selected or know who the mailing list contains.  You could send information and have it seen by users who you definitely don’t want seeing it.

• Don’t E-Mail Angry - Sometimes you will receive a message that angers you or maybe your upset for outside reasons.  Never, ever send an e-mail while angry.  Just leave it sit till the next day and approach your e-mail with a calm and collected mood.

• Respect Privacy – I’m not terribly strong on this point, but some people are really hypersensitive about their e-mail address.  I am personally not one of these people.  When sending an e-mail to a group of people consider using the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) option.  This will mask everyone who receives the message so none of your recipients know who else received the message.

• Have A Good Signature - Signature are important and everyone should have one.  Often times they are over done and sometimes down right distracting.  Don’t use photos in your signature as it will increase the likelihood of being caught by a spam filter.  Don’t put any kind of quotes in your e-mail, they could end being offensive or confusing to your recipient.  Use eight lines to compose your signature, anything more is just too much.  Only include what you want recipients to know!  I know it is kind of obvious but if you don’t want business calls at home, don’t include your home phone number.  Lastly don’t get flashy and fancy, keep it simple.  Your not designing a poster, use easy to read fonts.

• Check It Often - As I described above, nothing gets under my skin more when someone does not check their e-mail daily or respond in a timely matter.  Check your e-mail at the bare minimum once a day, I recommend checking it twice a day.  Don’t just read, respond!   Techno geeks like myself have e-mail on constantly with push notifications to our mobile devices.  When you send me an e-mail I get it within a minute or two.  If it is critical i’ll respond within minutes, not days.  You wouldn’t let your physical mailbox outside your home go unchecked for days, would you?

• Don’t Use HTML - Don’t use HTML to link to your website or blog or anywhere else on the web.  (i.e. “My Website”)  Actually spell out the address. (i.e. http://www.techization.com)  You never know what kind of e-mail client the recipient is using and how it could display or not display your address.  This leads to a distraction within the message and could result in a lost opportunity if your link doesn’t work.

And for goodness sakes spell check before you send!

Why use Twitter as a passive form of micro-emailing like leaving DM’s for professors when it can be a real-time virtual platform. I suggested that professors who have appropriate courses should display Twitter on the projector screens in the front of the classroom. With third-party software like Tweetdeck the professor can follow a custom hashtag for her class and have it auto-refresh at pre-determined intervals. This allows for a virtual conversation to take place between students as the professor lectures on a topic.

The professor can skim over the ongoing Twitter conversation during his or her lecture and comment on what students have been saying, this will deepen the lecture and make it more personable to the ‘pulse of the students’ who are taking it in. Giving every student a digital voice will cater to shy students who have things they’d like to say, but don’t out of fear of embarrassment.

Once out of the classroom, the student will be able to go back and re-read comments from any lecture. Re-reading his own tweets and those of his peers will help during weekly assignments and provide a platform for out of class discussion.

Even if a professor is ill or out of town, they can login to Twitter and watch their students comment and discuss that day’s lecture and even jump in the conversation while not present.

Twitter is a valuable communication tool but evolution of ‘real-time’ communication will continue well beyond the walls of Twitter, most notably with Google Wave in the next year or so. This idea is certainly an experimental one with many variables that can lead towards success or failure of its use. Some are obvious yet some are unforeseen. It is my hope that professors at UW-Stout will begin to utilize this means of communicating to aid learning and engagement.