Honestly, I think that mailing lists and listservs are an outdated technology. I think that there are more relevant technologies that can be used in the classroom. Social media is becoming more used among young people and this could be a more useful tool to use with students. Although people generally tend to use their emails on a daily basis (or more than daily), they seem to check their text messages even more frequently. I think that by grouping parents or students into a list is a good idea in terms of sharing news items or reminders. As a teacher, I use Remind101. The students love it and it keeps them updated with any upcoming assignments or 'news items'. The students all received these messages instantly after sending the reminder. I think that this would be a better use of a mailing group.
Twitter is another good way of relaying information to both students and parents. We can use specific hashtags or we can use a specific Twitter handle for the class that people can follow to keep updated with any news. Twitter might be good for students to collaborate as well. I prefer the idea of having a discussion board because then students can collaborate and contribute and they can subscribe at their own will. Although this may take more time in terms of teacher involvement, I think it would be more useful.
Another concept that was brought up in terms of the effectiveness of listservs was the idea of subscribing to listservs that provided teaching strategies or ideas for the area that you are teaching. Although I think that this could be a unique use of mailing lists, I think I'd rather be an active "searcher" for content that is very relevant to the material that I am teaching. For example, a daily email that is sent out may not be relevant to the concept that you are teaching at the time or it may not be relevant at all. In this case I see more use in a tool just as Pinterest where I can group resources and pin boards that are beneficial to my teaching practice.
I find that one of the most useful messaging technology is iMessage group messages. This way information can be sent to many different people at once and everyone involved in the message can participate if they see fit as well as you can see what everyone else has contributed. The obvious downfall is that the contributors all have to have Apple products.
Google has an "app" or software that can be used for as a discussion group that I think could be highly beneficial to group work and class projects as well as for students to discuss questions that they may have to use as a "peer tutoring" session. It is also good to have this moderated by a teacher to ensure that digital citizenship is maintained.
Although I think that listservs have proved to be useful in the past, I think we as a technological society are moving away from email and moving towards more instant messaging.
That's all for now!