Tips on Using Our Online Forum (Google Group)

[Life Lab Garden Classroom]

Here are some tips and resources to using our Santa Cruz County School Gardens Group. (note: the images below are from a different group but the information on using the group is the same for all groups)

The Santa Cruz County School Gardens Forum is a space for garden educators to share questions, challenges, ideas, and resources with one another. This forum is open to the public to view. To use the forum:

• You’ll need a Google account
• Click New Topic or Apply To Join This Group
• Once signed in you can either click New Topic or find an existing relevant Topic post and add your perspective or resource to the discussion.

 

Online forums can be confusing. We hope the basic tips below will help provide some clarity on using our forum.
For more help visit Google Groups Help Page

Searching and Posting

We have created the following Topic categories (tags) to help direct conversations and provide structure to the forum. You can browse and post within these Topics. You can also use the search box on the top of the page. Before posting new Topics please take a quick look to see if there is already a similar Topic discussion started and considering replying to the existing Topic if it makes sense. This will help to consolidate the great conversations we are having and make the forum easier to navigate in the future. Click the red New Topic button to start a new Topic discussion or the red Post Reply button to add to an existing Topic discussion.

Adjust Your Your Delivery Preferences

Click the person/gear icon in the top right corner and then click Membership and email settings

Set Your Delivery Preference & Name

Choose how you want emails delivered and how your profile is displayed on our forum.

When to Reply to Everyone

If you have additional perspectives or resources to add to the discussion reply to everyone on the forum so they can see what you have to share. Click the little double arrow reply button to cue up your reply to everyone. If you are just acknowledging or thanking a post author it is best to reply just to the author and not the whole forum.

When to Reply Just to the Author

If you have words of appreciation or acknowledgement (such as "thanks for sharing", "great resource") it is best to reply just to the author. You many also want to reply just to the author if what you have to share isn't as useful for our whole forum to see (for example "we do that in our town too"). Click the little down arrow to access the reply to author feature.

Posting and Replying By Email

In our forum you can post or reply to a discussion Topic by sending to an email to sc-schoo...@googlegroups.com. When you send to sc-school-gardens@googlegroups.com you will be sending to everyone. You need to be sending from your Google account that is part of our forum. When posting by email you cannot apply tags (our moderator will do it). If you want to reply just to the author replace sc-school-gardens@googlegroups.com with the author's email.




How to Hyper-Link to a Topic Post

If you want to share a topic post or link to previous post you can click the little down arrow to access a hyperlink to the post. This can be useful if you want to reference past or relevant posts in the new post or reply that you are creating.