Vision for OneVille documentation

Overall hopes for our documentation:

Documentation should be coherent -- glued to our core research questions, throughout.

Most of all, we need basic analytic categories coherent across the project. Otherwise the project will not make a clear contribution to thinking or work.

-cites to research or other projects should go as if in footnotes (secondary for the reader).

-simple language.

-examples of "ahas" and “how to” take precedence so that we show what we learned in this work and help others tackle the same sorts of issues where they live.

Documentation should be visually inviting, even playful/fun. Think of enticing a teacher or young person or parent to tackle similar efforts where they live. Use lots of visuals and photos and color. Individual and group photos (or short video clips) of our participants, particularly next to their voices or work.

Imagine a final product that looks like http://one.laptop.org/stories; http://pantone.wikia.com/wiki/Pantone_Wiki; (http://ohinternet.com/Main_Page).

The site should be hypertextual and particularly, should link to other projects within the OneVille Project.

The documentation should include the voices of our participants. (see below)

(More details:)

Documentation should in the end be downloadable, and distributable by people; something they can email around their school.

The documentation should perhaps also include our contact info, so that people can ask questions of us and our participants. Should we urge people to “please contact us"?

We might offer an index that also talks about other things to read.

Of particular concern: including participant voices

We hope that the more direct quotes, products, and videos we have from youth, parents, and youth, the better we will convey what we've been doing.

We might get quotes from participants through targeted interviews now as we co-construct the documentation, or, take them from data collected throughout the project.

We might include short video interviews that enrich the content but aren’t required by site visitors to watch if they want to understand what we've been doing.

Not all of our participants will want to work on this documentation from scratch with us. Some will. But some will want to comment on examples as they take shape. We should invite any version of participation.

Some prompts for getting those voices:

(What communication supporting students did this working group make a bit more possible?

(if known: What new support for young people has resulted?)

(What interested you in doing this in the first place? What did you think might be gained?)

(What are particularly thought-provoking examples or stories from your project, that say something about improving communication in public education?)

More specifically: was there some moment in the pilot when you realized something about needed communicatiosn in public education? [Communication ahas]

More specifically: was there some moment in the pilot when you redirected the work to make something succeed? [implementation ahas]

(What are continuing barriers to needed communications?)

(Should others do what you have been doing? What would you tell them to make that possible?)

Plan to set each working group free to document

ADD HERE ONCE TESTED

Technical instructions aiding OneVille colleagues in the documentation

How to upload an image to the wiki:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Managing_files

from ^ but modified for our theme slightly:

Upload a file

  1. Prepare the file for upload. Make sure the file is exactly as you want it.
  2. In the sidebar, under “toolbox”, click “Special Pages.”
  3. On the Special Pages page, click "Upload File"
  4. Click “Browse” next to the “Source filename:” to locate the file on your computer (the name of the “browse” button depends on your web browser).
  5. Change the “Destination filename:” to something descriptive, if necessary.
  6. Fill in the “Summary,” if necessary.
  7. Click the “Upload file” button.

To use an image in another page, you treat it much the same as a wiki link:

File:Cane Portrait Chevreuse.JPG

Female Mallard

^ File name |size to display | caption ]]