So let's discuss a few suggestions to preserve this Golden Age of email a few years longer. Send hypotheses and ask for opinions, not facts A better solution is to have the students do all the work and then send their final, best thinking to someone for feedback. Use the students' expertise as a calling card. When someone receives a thoughtful and effortful request for a little feedback, people are more likely to respond. Ask for opinions, as facts can be gained from other sources.
Expert opinions are precious.
Although there are pages to Ask an Expert , the real power of the Web is that behind every Web page is at least one real person. And they are usually pretty passionate or they wouldn't be posting a Web page. Email addresses are often listed at the bottom of pages. Also, when students find their own, you're not sending entire classes to spam one poor soul's mailbox. This is the strategy used in Searching for China 2.0 .