Network creation and maintenance

Mica: "how would something like this be created//run/maintained?"

What is the network?

In the context of creation and 'running' a network, how do you define this network?

Firstly, the term network is useful in describing the interactions of individuals within the site, but it is not a correct term any more than the term 'network' would apply to Wikipedia or other collaborative websites.

I suggest viewing the idea of the network as a succession of nested frames, each frame, contained within the previous frame, and a slightly different context of our work.

• Community who agree with overall principles
• Software platform for running and organizing information
• Specific website

Via the Ford grantee network, internet-savvy educators and members of other communities around the web, am amorphous community must be formed. This community will partake in a dialog, seeded with this document, on how and why to aggregate examples in education, taking advantage of various technologies and economies of scale provided by the Internet. This group (with us or a similar group) will collaborate to create goals and an agreed upon structure that takes advantage of technical efficiency and the frame / format of educational institutions.

Together, and spearheaded by this Network project, this larger group will collaborate on creating a software platform and interface that collections information. It is important to discuss the design process with the community because they will allow you to avoid decisions that may restrict you later. Ultimately this group creates a piece of software that allows users to share educational stories (successes and failures) and communicate with each other in the consensus reached in the larger group's dialog.

The Network working group (us) will run one instance of this software. Community members are free to participate on this site to aggregate examples. This community, via creation and participation, will form community norms around the structure of these examples, and their display/sorting/rating within this site. The norms created in this instance of the community will go up a level in our mental model to further direct the development of the software.

Ownership of community, platform and data will be expressly open from the outset of the project. Proper respect paid to contributors by expressing self determinism in the overall community, allowing for free collaboration and use of software, and the open interchange of examples are prerequisites. At any time a group from the overall community who wish to organize their project differently, may modify and use a copy of the underlying software to host their own site that aggregates educational examples. Because of the open interchange of examples, this second group may take or leave any examples from the first group's site. And if the second group becomes established enough to produce their own examples, the first group may borrow any examples that fit their community criteria in turn.

Who builds the network?

I see the network as an inevitability. Given the successes in other domains of aggregating and using data via technology, doing the same for educational worked examples will clearly happen. The purpose of this document is to galvanize the overall community that will build this network, lay out the topics that must be discussed by this group, and if successful, lay the groundwork for us to shepherd this effort into a living example.

Similar networks like Wikipedia are owned by no one. They were built by many people serving their own interests and wishing to serve the public. A site like Wikipedia is run much like a public trust, with a limited number of grants and public donations.

The Who of building the network is less fundamental than the how.

Cost

Hosting

One cost of the network will be in web hosting and server space. This server space will be larger than that needed to merely host the Network website. the server space will also need to host development space and media for groups.

Mica's framing

(my paraphrasing of her frame to me) Particularly important for my conversation w/ Ford folks is for you both to flesh out the section on how/out of:

• where such a "Network" would be created and run.

(I don't want to pretend to promise to singlehandedly create and run the Network we're talking about)

• So, I need some ideas to present about how I could participate in this with others, not be solely "in charge."
• How do Networks like this get off the ground?
• Are they truly co-created?
• Do they just need a good platform to get going, and then they're publicly created?
• How self-sustaining can they be?
• Do they need employees to run them?
• Do we know folks who might want to take this on?