Recap+of+Call+on+Sept.+12


 * Paul's Recap** //To Read John's response scroll or// click here

I want to start out with my brief recap of what we decided on as next steps from yesterday's conference call. First, we agreed to set up a listserv and wiki workgroup space for developing documentation and sharing files, and since you have been setting up private and semi-private working groups for a while now (and your tools are more easily opened up to the whole Internet), you agreed to set these up (and here we are).

We also talked about short-term and long-term goals or objectives of this joint project/partnership.

The primary short-term goal was to find the best way to publish or share some of the nuggets of content that you have distilled from listserv conversations, and potentially some of your new blog content, on our site. Whether that content would be hosted by you or by us is a detail that remains to be worked out.

One thing that came up in the meeting but not the phone call is the possibility of revenue sharing, if the content lives on our site; we would be running ads (presumably) on these pages, and we could work out some sort of revenue split potentially from the ads on these pages. I recall there being a hesitation on your (Barnett's) part, related to the idea of accepting money from all comers, but the way we run ads today, in most cases, is to provide our banner advertisers with run-of-site placements, so it would be difficult to pick and choose advertisers (while this could technically be possible, I also foresee a very cumbersome process that would make our ad trafficking much more difficult as well.) Details like this need to be worked out, of course, before we proceed, but they should be simpler to negotiate than some of the systems development/integration that looms in the more distant future.

We also promised to share with you some of our research into technologies of collaboration and community participation/journalism, and that you would do the same. I actually just authored a wiki page on our chat software search (for our internal development wiki), and when I'm up on WikiSpaces, I'll try to copy it there, along with other social networking or community content systems we've looked at or heard about.

Longer-term, we need to explore what forms our integration of your community into our site, and its engagement with our audience, might take; what technologies and services we should set up; how we might integrate our systems; where the lines would be drawn, etc. Initially, it seems likely that the private deliberations and collaboration of your Teacher Leaders rightly resides in your space, with your more active participation suites of software, but anything that would be more public (and searchable), and try to engage other teacher leaders or wannabees (or teachers who want to learn from the best) would be located on our site. Finally, Sheryl said she would look at eMeta and we could as well, to begin thinking about the feasibility of providing a single-sign-on authentication system (and single set of profiles, etc.) across the two systems.

Everyone please chime in with your comments, or note anything I may have left out.

Thanks, Paul




 * John adds..**..

Excellent summary of our talk.

I would only add that Anthony and I talked a bit about exploring some available content in the next week or so. And I mentioned that we have quite a bit of content that has not been made public, not because it couldn't be, but because we just haven't had the resources to keep up with these amazing folks -- that is, to compile it, clean it up, arrange it so it flows, post it, etc.

Most of the content in our "Conversations" area of the old website (still up but about to go through a transition) is on HTML pages and is, to coin a word, "anonymitized" -- edited to disguise the authors' identities. This was part of our agreement with our members who participate in the private listserv conversation. However, it's usually a simple matter to get OK's to use names/roles/locations where there's a real need.

There's also a LOT of content in our blog, which has been on the Web for a couple of years... most recently, I've been posting a single point of view and adding other members' comments on the topic as "Comments" in the blog. The latest was around John Stossel's "Stupid in America" - http://tln.typepad.com/tln_voices/

I also mentioned during our phone chat that among the conversation threads, there's usually one about a current event -- a new report, news story, book release, movie (lots of talk about the Ron Clark Story which led to general discussion about the way teachers are portrayed in movies). Some other recent lively listserv chats (last two weeks) have addressed:

-- Alfie Kohn's new anti-homework book (with TLN'ers on both sides) -- test scores v. classroom assessments, and how to talk to parents about student progress -- and an interesting, diverting chat about teachers who have taught their own children

All three of these threads were instigated by members w/o staff prompting. We rarely HAVE to prompt. We can, and do, when we'd like to gather thoughts on a particular topic. (That's something to think about that could help align with some of your projects and themes.) But the ongoing conversation lives and breathes, whether we intervene or not!

John