schooltoolers team mailing list archive

[Ben Greenfield <ben@xxxxxxxx>]

On Mar 11, 2011, at 11:03 AM, Tom Hoffman wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 6:24 AM, Ben Greenfield <ben@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I would add Community of Educators
> 
> Having given this a bit of thought, I'm going to offer a bit of
> pushback about this as "brand value."
> 
> To be sure, this would have been on my list when we started the
> project, and I would love for SchoolTool to really be based on a
> community of educators, but it isn't, and is unlikely to be, and we
> should probably be honest about that.

That could be although technically I'm sysadmin because the system I support is for education I consider myself an educator. 

> 
> Teachers and principals don't want an SIS that comes with obligations
> to a community.  They just want one that works.  They have too much
> other, more interesting and immediate, stuff to do.
> 

Your correct about this they hate it every time I bring it up.



> And the minority teachers and principals who *are* interested in
> getting something specific out of their SIS aren't thinking "I need
> this thing, I'd love to have a discussion with the community about
> it."  They're thinking, "I want this thing, period."  We know this
> from experience.

I guess I'm thinking about the other idealist  in small poor rural schools who in the late 80s early 90s were called power users.

> 
> To the extent that a "SchoolTool Community" develops, it is going to
> be one level up: our developers, integrators like Critical Links,
> NGO's like OLE Nepal and the Open Institute, and government IT people.
> 

Yes, I guess I include them as educators but your right that isn't focused.

> Another example would be the community in Virginia around CanDo and
> SchoolTool.  But I would argue it is more accurate in that case to say
> that SchoolTool has been adapted to the community than those folks
> have become part of the SchoolTool community.

So far but they have developed something and other schools could pick it up. Maybe it never will ignite but another school may develop the thing that puts schooltool on the map.

> In theory making them part of the SchoolTool community would be cool,
> but in practice it is just as good or maybe better to just have
> SchoolTool disappear into their community.

Maybe we need to focus on the young foolish idealist.


> Hopefully my critique here does not discourage conversation in this
> community.  ;-)
> 

The conversation would be boring if we agreed>

Thanks,

Ben


> Thoughts?
> 
> --Tom