The Collaboratory
A significant part of our work is the initial setup, user training, facilitation and management of collaboration tools for clients who have not yet adopted them. Taken together, these tools form the key pieces of a
"collaborative online laboratory" to create plans, professional learning communities, and learning 2.0 projects. While they make it possible for remote experts and helpers like use to work with your school, they should become a part of each school's infrastructure, independent of any particular contractual relationship.
Below are key Collaboratory functions, and our tools of choice. The Empowered Teacher is a partner company to Game Face Web Design, a Drupal development company. As Drupal experts, our added value is highest in that platform. If your school has already selected a different tool for some of these functions, however, we will adapt.
- Point-to-Point VideoConferencing: Skype, which allows both parties to swap between screen-sharing and video sharing.
- Group Conferencing: GoToMeeting, which allows multiple attendees to view a shared screen and share audio by phone or VoIP. This allows teachers who cannot get to computers to converse with those who have computers in their classroom but no accessible phone.
- Planning Site: Open Atrium (see Planning Site, below), a customizable project management and online community platform made with Drupal. If familiar with project management software, Open Atrium lies somewhere between BaseCamp and GoogleDocs. This is hosted by Game Face Web Design at first for reliability, but may be transferred to a server in the school once it is a trusted tool.
- Sandbox Site: Custom Drupal site (See Sandbox, below), configured for teachers to develop web pages and Learning 2.0 projects. All components are built to specifications based on "support tickets" placed in the Project Management system. This is best hosted by Game Face Web Design, so that technical problems beyond school personnel expertise do not interfere with teaching and learning.
- Development Site: A New Drupal installation administrated by local personnel. Our goal is to transfer our Drupal knowledge to school personnel, at whatever speed makes sense. The Development Site is a place to experiment with Drupal sitebuilding and configuration. This can be hosted by Game Face Web Design until a local server is available, then transferred.
- Public Showcase Site (Optional): None of the previous three "intranet" sites is designed for public access - logins protect student identity and obviate the need for district-level editorial control. If your public-facing website is built with Drupal, it is easy to import projects from the Sandbox, cleaned of student data and inappropriate material.
The Planning Site: Team Project Development
| Tool | Our Version | Use Case |
| Wiki | Atrium Documents | Online documents easily printed to paper or PDF, used to outline project plans, list curricular standards, and develop common assessments. |
| Forum | Atrium Blog | Discuss plans, coordinate implementation, reflect on results. Communication begins with a post, continues in threaded comments. |
| To Do | Atrium Casetracker | Create projects and cases. Each case is assigned to a person, given a category and a priority, and associated with comment threads for clarification and updates. |
| MicroBlog | Atrium Shoutbox | A quick note to the members of project or the entire community; can also be sent to Twitter or Email. |
The Sandbox Site: Blended Learning Projects
The Sandbox Site is a structured Drupal site, customized for your school. It is connected to the Planning site by shared Teacher accounts. When teachers implement projects developed through the Planning Site, they determine which students, outside experts, and others will be participants.
Without logging in, it is impossible to see any student work, in accordance with COPA regulations. Once logged in, users can see whichever projects they have been given access to, and participate at whatever level they are invited. The school has complete control over the environment.
At the end of a project, teacher and student work may be edited and prepared for sharing on the schools Public Site. If that site is also a Drupal site, content can be exported and imported easily.
Online Course Management
Schools that wish to offer standard online courses (targeting individuals rather than groups, starting new each semester rather than contributing to an evolving community, and geared towards delivering fixed content or skills goals rather than a cumulative curriculum) can add Moodle (the open source version of Blackboard / WebCT) to the collaboratory to support online learning. The Empowered Teacher hosts and supports Moodle as well as Drupal, and can provide instructional design support for in-service courses or "virtual classrooms".
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