Job Discussion Forums

some waygug-in · Joined: 07 Feb 2003 Posts: 339

I have noticed this for the Korean Job info journal and I am wondering if it applies to all of them or just the Korean one.

The journal seems not to be accepting new posts for well over 9 months now. I am wondering if there is a specific reason for this and what it might be.

Also, I wonder what other people's thoughts are regarding the usefulness/uselessness of said journal.

Do you think it's helpful? Why or why not?

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

wondered why there were no new entries.....though I think the past entries were generally useful, especially for newbies.

ls650 · Joined: 10 May 2003 Posts: 3484 Location: British Columbia

The Indonesian journals haven't been updated since December 2004. I've tried submitting a positive report at least twice in the last few months but it hasn't appeared. I've found the journals to be very helpful, but if they aren't updated regularly they lose their usefullness.

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

Maybe it's not gotten any exposure of late. Latin America is the same.

some waygug-in · Joined: 07 Feb 2003 Posts: 339

I personally have found it to be both useful and useless at times, and I agree that it is more useful when it is kept current.

It was useful to me to read others' experiences, not just with particular schools, but with life in the country etc.

It was also useful as sort of a place where people could post job warnings, but I realize that this is not its real purpose.

What I found frustrating about it was that you couldn't always tell how honest or sincere a post was.

Someone could blacklist a school for non-payment, for example, but perhaps they were let go for valid reasons.

Also, someone could post a "glowing" report about their experience, but you could never be sure if that person was honest or if they were doing it for money.

There is also the problem of preferential treatment, and I have experienced this myself. A school can be "wonderful" to one teacher and "awful" to the next.

But I still think it was useful to have a journal rather than not have one.

ls650 · Joined: 10 May 2003 Posts: 3484 Location: British Columbia

I asked The Man himself, Dave Sperling:

denise · Joined: 23 Apr 2003 Posts: 3419 Location: finally home-ish

That�s too bad. Yeah, you never could tell how authentic a post was, but I still found them very useful. The teacher training forum, on the other hand... I can�t make any sense of it! So hard to follow the threads! And now that we�ve got a newbie forum here, all of those CELTA-type questions have a home on this forum.

d

schwa · Joined: 12 Oct 2003 Posts: 164 Location: yap

Its day is done.

It always did seem like a bit of a weird adjunct to the forums themselves. I guess it was meant to have a different flavor from discussions, like a more permanent repository of experiences. For some less-visited countries, it was the only info going, but often woefully out of date.

For other more popular countries, it turned into just another forum for opinion & debate. There were no clear criteria for what kind of post belonged there.

It was valuable to me when I was looking for first-hand stories when I was first thinking about teaching abroad. That was 1999. There wasnt so much stuff out there but thats really not an issue anymore.

De-link it, Dave. No loss.