OneVille's principles

Note that when combined, our efforts are designed to help people in public schools communicate a full range of key information to a full range of key participants in a child’s life. We want to support people to communicate the following, rapidly and when they need to:

a) the child’s full range of skills, progress and educational/relevant life experience;

b) knowledge, information, and resources needed to support young people’s full development.

Note too that we contend that the circulation of information needs to be multidirectional: getting information *from* a parent on a child’s situation is as important as getting information *to* her.

So, we contend that the overall direction of needed improvements to the “communication infrastructure” of public education might follow *these two principles*:

-Rather than only communicate about some aspects of young people’s development, we need to communicate about all necessary aspects;

-Rather than only communicate with some people about the acts necessary to support a young person, we need to communicate with all necessary partners.

This means that with our tools and strategies, we want to eliminate barriers to needed communications between partners. We design our improvements to the communication infrastructure of public schools, accordingly.

What's been particularly cool about working in Somerville is that we've had the chance to engage young people, families and teachers in design efforts to bring tech into the everyday core of life and communication in “regular” public schools. How might such participatory design research efforts transform public schools from the inside out?