Outside Examples

Comparison to Existing 'Network' Attempts

DO SUCH NETWORKS ALREADY EXIST? MARK AND SETH, THIS IS WHERE I NEED YOU. I HAVE THIS (edited slightly) FROM THE FORD LANGUAGE. THINK IT'S TRUE?

Existing web hubs, like the “What Works Clearinghouse” or “Edutopia,” house useful but undistilled knowledge, and they are hard for the public to search and easily use; most sites also allow for no public input into defining or naming “what works” in local places. While the Network will link the public to these existing knowledge “hubs,” it will focus on linking the public to examples that both researchers and the public find particularly useful for increasing young people’s opportunities to learn. 

Review of other networks

School Victories

Mark's review

Our review: This site may be useful but it isn't getting much use and doesn't have many catalytic functions designed in. Doesn't help groups join forces to pool resources around a common nationwide event day.

It's not very inspired or imaginative. The "feel" and personality are more institutional than lively warm community in nature. I don't think, as a media specialist, that this site is designed to spark interest and cross-cutting partnership. It's mostly listing driven. Plus it seems text-driven rather than graphically driven; more Internet-past than Internet-present or future. It would be interesting to compare a search here to a search in the standard google window or in the edutopia site.

Based on the sparseness of entries, I'm guessing the site is not actively scraping other sites and aggregating and tagging that info here. Nor are there tools of emergent awareness: a tag cloud, for example, of entries and activities and group missions.

Taxonomy

While School Victories tries to segment the audience of the site via the right curricula (source group, target group, group/class size, geographic location and others), they fail to allow for emergent grouping (folksonomy) and focused data analysis.

Example

Group size ranges = 1-10, 11-25, 26-50, 51-100, 100+.

This is insufficient for focused analysis of the resulting data. Compare two similar cases; (A) had 27 students, and (B) 47 students. (A) was successful but (B) was not. This data entered into the School Victories system, the difference in group size would not be present in the data as both would choose '26-50'.

This problem could be avoided by allowing for entry of data with limited restrictions. In this case, entering any integer number would allow for far richer data analysis.

Question of geographic scope

Another manner in which an ideal network would differ is in scope of the project. While this project makes appeals to groups outside of PA (by allowing members from all US states), there are more affordances for PA projects than outside. If non PA projects do participate, they enter into the system on unfair footing.

Incentives

The stated appeal of the SV site is viability for submitters/participants. This incentive is desirable to some, but there are missed opportunities for other incentives to participate.

Other incentives could include:

site rewards

Reward users with progress bars and successive site kudos when they accomplish certain goals in documenting their activities.

social esteem among peers

Allow for positive commenting and discussion around good activities, or 'like' buttons that allow peers to express positive esteem for projects without criticism. 'Liked' projects could rise to extra visibility.

Publicity

No evidence of a "school%20victories" social media campaign of promotion.