General
- Participants are in the
following communities by default:
- their school,
- their family,
- their class,
- their district,
- their country
Communities are governed by
internally agreed rules.
Mail
All participants
should be able to mail to some (see below) individuals
and to their own communities.
Different "categories" of
mail should be immediately differentiated visually:
personal mail, mass unsolicited mailings, community
mailings, "cards" (Christmas, birthday, etc) - some of
these are automatic - (birthday card from the system
for example helps check birthday errors).
Participants should be able
to receive mass mailings (subject to approval from the
national steering committee), community mailings (if
they are a member of that community), individual
mailings (only from people in their address book)
Participants should be able
to add individuals to their address book by choice.
Parent or teacher can view the address
book.
Each participants' address
book only contains mail addresses that they add
intentionally (ie this should not happen automatically
but be a conscious decision). If a participant mails
someone outside the system that person can reply but
not originate a new mail contact unless they are
entered in the recipient's address book. After some
debate we think it is likely that teachers will want
to see students' address books, but not their mail of
course.
Participants should be able
to display mail in a whole range of different ways
(tag their mail with for example different personal
labels eg "what have I received since last Tuesday",
"what have I received from xx community", "what have I
received to do with my chemistry project") and these
modes of mail display are likely to change frequently
for any individual.
Labels and
keywords
A broad principle
should be that everything on the site can be
labelled/keyworded, including individuals, tasks,
communities, news etc. Objects can be searched for by
label.
There is a labelling
hierarchy - at the national level many predefined
labels/keywords are available (extra labels/keywords
may be requested by national
organizations).
Further labels/keywords
exist at other community levels, for example the
school. These are selected by the community and only
seen within that community but can be applied anywhere
(eg in a swimming community Fred's coaching tips label
might apply to nutrition information outside the
community but nobody outside the swimming community
would want Fred's coaching label).
Similarly individuals can
invent their own labels, for their own use, that they
can apply anywhere, but only they can see (eg "handy
for my revision", "before my hamster
died").
Posties and
comments
Effectively, little
stickers or markers. Could/should be attached to
anything (any word, sentence, paragraphs, image. etc
"I like this", "see my Q&A page", "spelling?",
"well done" "I'm doing something like this, find it
at..."). Anyone in your address book (or community?)
can stick a postie on things you have created.
Only a page's author/s can
read posties. There may be standard postie items
(stars, hearts...) and blank 3M type ones. Your mail
intray reports when you have a postie, and takes you
there.
Authoring
Participants should be able to
author...
- ...posties
- ...postcards ie I visited
somewhere and sent a postcard back ('site is lovely,
wish you were here') - the page carries a "thumbnail"
of the page you visited.
- ...own web space -
authoring the different look and feel (background gif,
colour, photo) - and maybe changing the look and feel
by automating when/where they are displayed
(day/night, home/school)
- ...labels
- ...tasks - web based forms
- data gathering including some means of analysis
display... [the technology limits on this one may
be tough?]. This one is essential becaue any model
of learning rquires that people do things and we need
tasks to tell them what to do if this is to be a
learning community.
- ...discussions in a
community you belong to subject to the community
rules
Community / collaborative
authoring should be thought of as special cases of
individual authoring but with multiple identities (system
would need to track individual contributions, time,
versions, etc)
Discussion
groups
See section of Discussion
types
Miscellaneous
• use of colour
(colour to denote age white = new, grey = old, colour
to denote something defined by the community eg house
system in school) Colour to represent time should be
the default position?
• Multiple media
debates - participants should be able to decide on the
media in which to contribute
• A community needs a
manifesto and rules.
• Some colours should
be reserved for some specific signifiers - eg age and
time.
Automatic
behaviours
• individuals are
logged as present when visiting a page (who's here
now) (although what is revealed of each guest may be
limited).
• system will collect
where participants have been (as a record for their
own reference) and thi is displayed as some form of
footprinting wherever you access the system
from
• participants may mark
a version of their work as worthy of returning to
(capture the moment) - of particular help both to help
them understand their own progress and for teachers
wishing o offer formative assessment.
Simultaneous
chat
A debate is needed as
to whether this is desirable or not (in our big
Schools OnLine project they were happy to see "who is
online" even though for most of the oproject there was
no chat.
if we DO decide on chat then
we are certain that it must have persistency -
anything said is captured for later
reference/examination.
Security
To be posted
elsewhere.