Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Let's Start Building the Tool

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This is kind of a skewed “Field of Dreams” scenario, but what with Dave asking for “A vision for the next generation of blogging tools” (and getting 133 responses), and with the expressed willingness at this site of Scott at Feedster, Mark at Bloglines, Mike at Furl, and Greg at Blogdigger to help the cause along, and Tom’s obvious interest in where this might all be going, I’m starting to think (hope?) that if we as educators come up with the concept, maybe someone will build it. (This feeling may also be caused by my general impatience and lack of sleep as well.) What say we throw some of our own educator type ideas down and see if someone might take pity on our poor souls and develop something? (And even if no one else wants to, I feel a real need to put some form to what’s in my brain.)

So, thinking from a teacher and student perspective:

  • I want something that will run on a Windows OS. Let’s get that out of the way right now. I truly appreciate the amazing things that are being done with Open Source, but suffice to say that mass adoption of anything non-Windows by schools is at least 10 years away and I just can’t wait that long.
  • I want it to be a CMS, much like Manila. I really love the power of Manila and the flexibility it offers, with a few caveats, of course. But this has obviously got to be more than a Weblog app.
  • I want to manage many sites from one interface. I waste way too much time logging in to all the freaking sites I’ve created.
  • I want the ability to make some content public and other content private.
  • I want easy forms with which I can create content modules to display XML feeds. Enter the feed, the box gets created, and I can move it where I want. (Wouldn’t a drag a drop page design tool be cool? This link list here, this search feed here…)
  • I want Furlability for both bookmarks and to create posts (like “Blog This,”) and I want to have a bunch of different logins that I can manage in one spot.
  • I want a Bloglines type aggregator that I can customize in terms of design. Like, I want it to be another page in my Weblog, not a separate app. And I want to be able to subscribe to any/all of the feeds on my site by just clicking a box in a automatically generated list.
  • I want the ability to preview comments before posting on sites that I manage. In a K-12 school setting, I need to be able to make sure content is appropriate.
  • I want different levels of access for different groups (a la David Bayly’s Manila Fixer, which I still haven’t figured out how to use.)
  • I want a WYSIWYG editor that works. (One weakness of Manila.)
  • I want spell chech.
  • I want to upload static files like documents and presentations. (The gems aspect of Manila is very cool.)
  • I want to be able to search the whole thing.
  • I want an easy way to navigate through my archives. Give me a page with a long list of headlines and the first few snippets of the post.
  • I want easy ways to personalize the page for students who want to invest some sweat equity in their sites while maintaining a consistent overall look.
  • I want a calendar that does something.
  • I want to be able to easily link to a line in say, a student’s post, not just the post itself.
  • I want comments to be either public or private.
  • I want to be able to post/archive e-mail.
  • Actually, I want Phil Wolff’s idea of “Print to the Web” so I can just click a button in Word or PowerPoint or whatever and have it go to my space.
  • I want to be able to add pictures and graphics to posts easily. Audio, too.
  • I want it to be easy to send one piece of content to many different places.
  • Basically, I want a space that will act as personal portal, e-portfolio/LOR, communications hub, and personal archive/journal all in one.

    Anything else?

    • Comments

    1. Aaron Campbell says

      Thank you for this Will. And can we *please* create templates that are designed for the novice; ones that can be easily edited and configured according to students’ desires without having to fool with the templates? Manila’s Prefs–Appearence page just doesn’t cut it. Customization needs to be far easier. We need someone to build a tool specifically for the needs of educators and learners.

    2. Chris L says

      Some good ideas. Note that Open Source is not equal to non-Windows, and tying a tool to any specific platform rather than making it web-based is needlessly limiting.

    3. Will R. says

      Yeah…that was pretty dumb, huh? Thanks, Chris. Just look at the time stamp on the post. ;0)

    4. Dave Bauer says

      Why Windows? If you are running multiple sites, seems like you are talking a server application. Are schools really that picky on the server side? I definitely understand the need for a Windows desktop app.

    5. Will R. says

      Again, my bad. Obviously, we’re running Frontier right now which is a server app. What I meant was that it needs to run on a server OS like NT or Win 2000, not Linux. Not yet. (Does that sound right? Sheesh…my ignorance on the backend is really showing.)

    6. Pam Pritchard says

      After working with several teachers here of late….at this point…just give me the “delete news item” button next to the edit and I’d be really happy. Explaining that deleting has to be done through the discuss is confusing to people.