About this page: This page describes possible tools to build communication and community for the SIGnetwork site. This page is divided into types of technology. Each section reviews current and possible use of the technology as part of SIGnetwork and provides recommendations for further integration.

Website

A website for the group already exists at http://www.signetwork.org. Clean look, good branding, helpfulorganization scheme. The collection of resources here continues to be developed and updated. Currently concentrating on materials, best practices, and lessons learned from states. Seeking particular state input on projects that they have scaled-up. Another focus is on evaluation, general good practice and how states are undertaking their evaluation activities. The email list archives are currently housed here and the site can be searched.

Recommendation:
While this site is a digital collection rather than a simple "brochure" site, it could probably use the addition of features that would develop a more dynamic feeling of community and combat the sense of passive resource. It also needs the person power to keep resources current and to alert the clients (via list or other methods) that new and interesting resources are linked.

Email List

Currently available at sigserve@lists.uoregon.edu . The group has about 200 or so members, state sig directors, TA providers, state project evaluators, state directors. Activity has picked up on the list over the last two years. Several conversations have sparked extended conversation - Highly Qualified Teachers, HOUSSE and some others. The project Officer uses the list to dissmenate information, meeting agendas, application availability, etc. It's not a really a very active list, but this may suit as it means nobody has a whole slew of messages coming into email. While the responses are archived on the website, the system isn't the most efficient. The majordomo software that the University of Oregon uses to run the list has an archiving system that isn't very user friendly. So the list posts are being striped out and pasted into the html pages by hand. Additionally, the current software makes it problematic to post attachments of any size to the list - can't get word or pdf documents through, the message size limit is so small. Basically, you currently can't attach files.

Recommendation:

New list software that would allow for streamlined archiving and attachment of files. Also removal of folks from the list can be clunky, even for the administrator, so this might be improved with a new program. Daphne and Leigh have looked at some options. (Some of the list burden might be shifted by use of a message board for extended conversation. See below.)

The following tools, although popular and increasingly user friendly, will not be comfortable for everyone. However, they are really useful for collaboration at a distance and will add to the dynamic feel of a web site.

Message Board

signetwork does not currently have a message board. The message board is a good tool for extended conversation about topics. You can ask a question, or offer information and people can respond fairly rapidly, or, replies can be added to the thread over time. Folks can respond to any and all topics and back and forth that does not have to come into your e-mail. Drawbacks are that you would have to (electronically) go to the message board to signup and the post responses, so it requires a bit of initiative on the part of the user. However once you are signed up, you can set-it up to be alerted to new postings either via RSS (discussed next) or email. There is no question that it requires more initiative than the email list and a little more comfort with technology. But it removes the guilt of filling up someone's mailbox every time you ask a question on a list.

Techsoup has a good article about Using Message Boards to Build Community - it provides some tips about sustaining a community via message board, best practices and why use the message board. 4 pages with links to further resources.

Samples:

• Daphne provided a good example from her area of interest outside of work at http://www.death-valley.us/forums.html the software developers are located at http://www.phpbb.com/index.php

• This is a link to cheap message boarding solutions http://www.thinkofit.com/webconf/hostsites.htm#cheapbbs
  An important piece to consider is whether to pay for hosting or choose some open source software that might be served at the U of O somehow. Jason could be consulted about the possibilities, it might be that paying for the hosted solution is easier all around unless there is server capacity and interest in set-up in house. Or at the college? The university uses Blackboard for similar academic class functions, but it's not licensed or supported for use by grants.

• There are two boards that looked promising and I set up accounts to play around with them. Both have a basic structure similar to the sample Daphne offered.

  • The first board is an ad supported site. But you can get no ads for pay at http://www.canaca.com/
    The site is at http://phpbb-host.com/phpbb/?mforum=tacs It's called "edutechtalk: A discussion about use of technology for sig site" and I'm Blake. You should be able to read without logging in. Registration requires only a user name, email and choice of password. Then you can post.

  • The second site is for pay at websitetoolbox http://www.websitetoolbox.com. They offer a number of tools but you sign up for each so you can get the message board as a stand alone. I signed up for is a free trial that only lasted a week. This is easy enough to do and is worth it to play with the configuration possibilities. Here are some screen shots from my test. (There are also sample sites to look at.) Again all that is required to register is a chosen user name, password and your email. You could require that every new user be vetted but I set it up so I just got an alert when somebody new signs up. This board has RSS feed capacity which I like and they show you how to set up so the address can appear to be within your domain or just link from your web site. It is also possible to allow the attachment of files. Pricing seems pretty reasonable at http://www.websitetoolbox.com/pricing/message_board.html
    You can also add branding so it's not so generic looking - see the sample sites.

  • I've used WebBoard in the past (EDC has used it) There is a demo at http://demo.webboard.com/ and you can play around with it. The interface has improved since I last used it. In the past it used the "tree view" which was a kind of confusing frames based interface. There are some hsted solutions on the cheap message boarding list, the full webboard does a whole bunch of things other than message boards and that can be quite expensive.

Recommendation:

The message board could be a very nice tool. It does need somebody to moderate and stay on to of it. Time commitment to seeding, weeding and responding to what people post. But the ones I looked at both seem pretty user friendly and the cheaper ones pretty nice. Once people begin to use it could really take off. Keep the whole think simple and it might be a more attractive tool than some communities we have known.

RSS Feed

RSS* stands for either Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary depending on who you ask. Basically, a way of getting information about updates to news sites, blogs, specific websites or message boards pulled in to you via something called a news reader. A news reader is something like a web browser, but once you install it on your machine the news comes to you, you don't have to go out and look for it.

This technology is becoming very popular, not just with news junkies. The US Department of Education has a feed, the California Department of Ed has a feed, you can get a feed from the New York Times and The Washington post restricted to education stories. The headlines come in you can speed read them and read the full story if you want.

• This is the page describing the US Department of Education RRS feed http://www.ed.gov/news/newsletters/rssnewsfeed.html

• This is a list of readers at http://blogspace.com/rss/readers I've been using Netnewswire which I like very much and would be really comfy for the Mac user. There is a lite version that's free for both platforms, I think.

• To produce an RSS feed is not exceptionally complex and there are pieces of software that help develop the headlines for serving. You can also pull your headlines into a page so that when you change the feed they change on the page.

Recommendation:

This technology requires that the content be updated on a pretty regular basis or it's not worth it. It means a commitment to coming up with headlines (maybe once every two weeks at minimum), more often if possible, or you kinda look like everything is even less active than you actually are. It also requires users who are already into RSS or willing to get into it. It might be that users would see the benefit if they used it for multiple sources other than the SIG site like the Department of Ed or their national and local education new sources. This requires some education that their may or may not be time for...it's something to consider but maybe the users aren't ready.

Wiki

Wiki's are about collaborative document development. Multiple users can edit and respond to a page with a web interface that's pretty easy to understand (very like formatting a word document). The most well know wiki is wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

I set up a demo wiki at http://signet.jot.com/ It's a free set-up so I got only a limited number of distinct user names. I will email the generic name and password to you all, it will look like the same person editing and commenting for this experiment. Each user with an individual name would make better sense if it were a collaborative document and you wanted to know who was changing or suggesting what. The current page at the site is a copy of this web page. It's there so you can mess around and edit as you like.

There are solutions for pay that allow more individual users, and as with the message boarding there is freeware that can be configured if you have the tech interest, skill and capacity. The software used here is at Jotspot the wiki application at http://jot.com/

Recommendation:

This technology may not be something for particular use on signetwork but might be a good fit for TACS planning in network, with states or suggested to SIG states for use in their collaborative work.

* RSS is also what makes "podcasting" possible. That's another easy to develop technology that allows you to offer audio files on the web (generally as mp3 files). You can listen to regular audio broadcasts: interviews, how-to programs, that can be downloaded to your computer and then if you like to your mp3 player. Offerings originate with grassroots organizations, individual and commercial enterprises. The current version of itunes The current version of itunes makes podcast downloads a snap but you can get other RSS freeware that works the same way (ipodder). Audio is cheaper to produce than video and the files are smaller so it has some real application for professional development and teaching via the web.

Contact: russells@simmons.edu
This page updated February 3, 2006.