Here's a question: Folks have been joining this forum by the dozens in the past few weeks, so why doesn't anyone actually use it?!  Certainly folks are reading -- by the hundreds, but conversation remains stilted at best.

This is not a situation unique to this forum, by any means -- other forums report similar issues. So why is that?  Forums are, by nature, quite different from yahoo or similar online discussion groups.  Forums users tend to be more thoughtful readers, and slower to voice their opinions sometimes. But forums offer a very civilized venue for online discourse.

So I we invite you here, now, to *say something!*  Ostensibly, you're all here because you're interested in education, in learning, in the world at large and your place in it.  What's your passion?  What do you do and why do you think it's important?  Scan our topic boards and find one that speaks to you -- and speak back. 

C'mon!  What are you waiting for?  The Education Conversation is going on all around us, and here at Learning is for Everyone it has the potential to take on new and exciting dimensions, bringing together a wide variety of thought and methodology that might be found no where else on the 'net (or off!). 

Here...we'll even give you another talking point:  A big project we've started work on this  year is a youth Citizen Journalism effort. You can read a little about it on the Dateline Tampa website: http://www.datelinetampa.com  As hard as it is for us as adults to speak out sometimes, youth have it even harder.  What? you might be asking.  Teens have trouble talking?  They're IMing, text messaging, blogging, and telling the world more about themselves than ever before!  True.  They talk nonstop -- but is anyone really listening?  And are we catching the important things they have to say, or giving them better venues than My Space and Facebook?

Dateline Tampa hopes to give them an opportunity to say something important, and a place to be taken seriously.  Our youth have opinions and ideas, on everything from the war in Iraq, to the economy and the environment.  We'd like to encourage them to think deeply and critically, and to challenge the adults in their world to do the same.

What are your thoughts?

Theresa Willingham
www.Learningis4everyone.org