Additional Regionalization Project Goals

2006 K20 Site Redesign Specifications
  Development Principles
 
The goal is to make participation intrinsic in the web application, part of its fundamental architecture.  Therefore, the new K20 website should build upon the underlying principles of the most successful Web 2.0 applications: 

Useful and Relevant:  the info on the site should always be fresh.  Users should be able to mark pages they want to "watch"; receiving email notifications whenever specified content is updated or added. 

Content must be discoverable:  the site must allow users to categorize and interelate the content (news articles, project desriptions, etc.) through user assigned tags via a single site search box.  when a user searches for "videoconferencing" they will get news stories, projects, people profiles, resources, etc.  This allows the content on the site to be easy to find and retrieve. see here

Simplicity: Make it as easy as possible for listeners to add or edit personal profiles, events, news, project descriptions, etc.  The users should not be burdened by long data entry forms (Craig's list example).  Admin users should not need database skills or know a markup language to create or edit pages, add nav items, manage user permissions, etc. 

Collective Intelligence:  Believe in the "wisdom of crowds".   Extend radical degrees of trust to the user as content providers - allowing them to add/edit/comment on site content in real-time.  (Wikipedia example) 

Feedback: Create effective monitoring tools to observe the behavior of users, better  understand which features are used, and how they are used.   The user should be considered a co-developer. 

National/Regional Views
Required Features

• The site should have 2 distinct "views" - a national view and a regional/state view.  There can be more than one regional/state views.
• Both of these view types are fed from the same underlying database.
• People, projects, events, news, etc. can be associated with a regional site or the national site but not both.  However, their profiles can be discoverable and displayed on all views.

Optional Features

• ??

User Types
Required Features

• National Site Admin
  • Can view and edit content globally
  • Change view users and set permissions globally 
  • Modify nav items displayed globally
  • Can add/edit the possible data attributes associated with news items, projects, people, events, resources globally
  • Can also edit which of the above items are displayed globally
  • Can access all connectivity survey data 
• Regional/State Site Admin
  • Can view available content globally but can edit/display content regionally
  • Can view users and set permissions regionally
  • Modify nav items displayed regionally
  • Can add/edit the possible data attributes associated with news items, projects, people, events, resources regionally
  • Can also edit which of the above items are displayed regionally  
• K20 Advisory Committee (AC) member
  • Can view and edit content globally
  • Can view the connectivity survey data for their state
  • Must complete a full personal profile
  • AC members receive profile update reminders every 6 months
  • A person can be both a regional site admin and a K20 AC member 
• Regional/National User
  • Associated with either the National or a regional K20 site
  • Can add news, comments, resources, events, projects to their portion of the site
  • Can search and view content from both regional and national sites 
• Anonymous
  • Just browsing the site
  • In order to post a comment, or add news items, etc. they need to create a simple user profile  
• All users receive periodic profile update reminders via email.
• Key the user profile off of the email address? thus eliminating the need for a separate username 
  Optional Features
• Consider a feature for archiving profiles with dead email addresses?

Well-Developed Admin Functionality
Required Features

• The national site will have an admin account that will control content, layout, and user permissions for the all levels of the site.
• Each regional site will have a site admin able to control the content, layout, and user permissions for the entire regional site.
• Content from the regional site(s) will be available for display on both the national and other regional sites.   National site content can be displayed on the regional sites as well.  Ex.  Someone posts a news story to the national site, regional site admins will receive an alert of new content and can choose to display the story in the news section on their regional site.
• Easy access to the text sent in automatic emails - page update notifications, people profile and project update reminders, etc.

Optional Features

• ??

User Profiles
Required Features

• At a minimum, user profiles must include the following user attributes
  • name
  • email address
  • occupation (??)
  • city, state/province, country (??)
• optional personal attributes
  • URL
  • personal picture
  • Phone
  • Fax
  • Address, ZIP
  • Organization Name
  • Organization URL
  • Organization type
  • selected keyword interests
  • description of how they would like to get involved in I2
  • IP address (and other Video conferencing attributes) 
• Users can just enter the required attributes to establish the account then go back and edit them at any time.
• Users should be sent a profile update reminder via email after xx amount of time.

Homepage Features

• Maintain the standard I2 header across both the national and regional views.
• Should be able to easily navigate between the regional and national sites - perhaps a breadcrumbs system is needed to track your location?
• National homepage should have links to the regional sites
• Regional sites should have similar look and feel as national site except with a place for their own logo or some way to distinguish themselves
• Homepage features news stories, events calendar, featured projects, an open text space for manually entering some interesting information.
• Site admin can select the content that appears on the main page.

Site Navigation Features

• Establish an admin controlled menu of navigation items that can be turned on/off on different views of the site.  This allows each site to decide

Project Descriptions

• Project descriptions can be created by any user
• The data attributes displayed for each project are determined by the regional or national site admin
• Users can rate projects according to a 5 star system
• Users can comment on a project
• There should be some sort of communication vehicle associated with a project. Anyone registered user can post a message to the communication vehicle
• People can "join" a project by associating their profile with the project.
• Projects should be associated with a particular site view (national or regional)
• Required project attributes
  • Name
  • Contact person
  • Project description text
  • Project category (controlled list)
  • Project status (active, in development, archived) 
• Optional project attributes
  • Associated multimedia
  • URL
  • Partner projects
  • Project keywords (somehow leverage the idea of tags?)

Events Calendar

• Any user can add an event
• Minimum information
  • Title
  • URL
  • 2 sentence description
  • Contact information
• Users can comment on events, discuss events

News

• Any user can add a news item similar to http://www.digg.com
• Users can comment on a news item, discuss it, email it.
• Minimum information
  • Article title
  • URL
  • Contact information
  • Date submitted, last edited (??)
• Optional info
  • short description

Resources

• Advisory committee members, regional admin, national admin should have the ability to upload/download powerpoint presentations, videos, pictures, etc.  anything that helps demonstrate the compelling I2 applications across the K20 initiative.  Similar to the current "resources" section on the k20 site except easier to use.
• A subset of these resources can be viewable by the public perhaps in the "about" section of the site.

Content Notifications

• Users can select pages they would like to "watch", receiving email notifications whenever new content is added to that page.
• Users can view and edit their notifications selections at any time via a simple interface.
• Users can determine the format they would like to receive their notifications via email (html or plain text)  

Optional Site Features

Customized Homepage

• Each user can decide what they want to appear on their K20 homepage.  When someone visits the site, it remembers who they are and displays their preferred content. A few choices might be..
  • News, specific projects, specific collections of people (my colleagues), a personal i2 events calendar
  • EXAMPLE: customizable google homepage                       
    Profiles of K20 Users 
    K12 teachers, Community College Faculty