Curating Online Conversations: Your Students' Works of Art

Many already know the educational benefits that podcasting offers within the classroom as well as how they can be used to aid professional development. There are so many podcast sites out there that offer videos as often as every week on specific themes and topics.  One such podcast that I found that I feel will be be beneficial for my future ESL teaching is How to Curate and Foster Online Conversations.  This podcast talks about the importance of finding a way to not only engage learners in online conversations for learning purposes within the classroom, but also how teachers can archive and save these conversations to return to at a later date and to just re-visit for learning purposes.  This podcast is beneficial for me as a future teacher because I never really thought of the dilemma of starting/initiating an online conversation with my students on a particular topic, but not having enough time to complete the topic/conversation.  Also, how do I make that conversation readily available to my students to finish at a later date as well as for students who would like to revisit it for personal learning purposes?  Though this podcast does not come up with a definite solution on how this can be done, it does pose many options as well as offers a colorful conversation on the importance of fostering online conversations so students can get all there is to offer out of such a learning tool.  One important point that is brought up during this podcast is that online conversations with students on certain topics may continue for a long time, and is it fair/appropriate to cut the conversation off for time purposes and leave it at that, or how can the teacher save or "curate" that conversation so the students can continue it at a later date?  I thought this to be a beneficial video that really made me think about the online learning component of teaching and how I can make it a better learning experience for my students.