Global Generation proposal

Here are some ideas for a collaboration of i-together with Global Generation, an NGO that encourages kids to explore their lives in terms of the whole world, particularly with regard to the environment.

Global Generation is already working with several schools and youth groups in London, and has plans for projects in Africa and other overseas locations. I put it to Blake Ludwig and Robin Daly, two founding members of G.G., that social software such as weblog tools (and, in the longer term, i-together’s own software), could give them and the kids they work with an online, geographically independent platform and set of tools for developing, presenting, exploring and communicating about the offline, geographically focused projects they create. Blake and Robin are really positive about the idea, and Blake tells me others in G.G. are similarly enthusiastic. We have provisionally arranged to install Moveable Type (weblog software) on Global Generation’s servers next week, but in the meantime, Blake asked me to put together a written proposal for the project. As we are talking about using weblogs, I thought I would post the proposal here, and then people can use the comments facility to add their suggestions and ideas!

So, here goes. Given that the i-together software will not be ready even for trialling for a good number of months, I will focus my main analysis of the online dimension of the project on available software tools such as weblogs, the TypeKey authentification service and newsreaders.

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Weblogging, or blogging, is fast growing in popularity across the developed world as an easy and powerful way of expressing oneself to a global audience, networking with other like-minded people (through links to and from other weblogs) and engaging them in dialogue (through adding comments to weblog entries). Furthermore, the ability to subscribe to a dynamic “newsfeed” (RSS) from a weblog (including those of an increasing number of large organisations, such as the New York Times and Greenpeace), or even from a particular subsection, allows users to read all the recent entries from their favourite sources in a newsreader application (such as NewsGator, which integrates with Microsoft Outlook) without having to visit each site in turn to check for new material. In effect, newsfeeds and newsreaders allow the creation of a completely customised virtual “newspaper”.

Whilst the majority of current bloggers are adults, there is also rapidly increasing interest and activity in schools around weblogging. Peter Ford, of the consultancy ICT 4 Schools, is a leading proponent of school blogging in Britain, and he has expressed enthusiasm to me about i-together and the prospect of working with organisations such as G.G. to promote global and holistic ways of communicating and thinking. Weblogs give kids and their teacher a chance to get proactive with curriculum-centred topics, creating something of their own to present and share online with others rather than focusing their study solely on exam preparation. They also encourage original, critical and creative thinking and the development of good writing style: the public nature of a blog provides a great incentive to develop these crafts and hence the ability to say something interesting and convincing that others will then (hopefully!) read, comment on and recommend.

The mission of i-together, the organisation that my friends and I are in the process of establishing, is to provide opportunities and tools—both online and offline—for people to explore their identity through creativity and relationship. With regard to the online dimension of i-together, I have designed an original web-based application which synthesizes key aspects of weblog, online social network and search services into a simple, transparent, powerful, integrated and intuitive whole. My vision for i-together’s online incarnation is to make a space where people can express themselves and relate to one another with complete freedom within the bounds—enshrined in the space itself—of a mutual respect for one another’s identity.

Developing such software will take time and money. But in the meantime, there is so much we can do to start building online networks with much of the same functionalities (weblog creation, newsfeeds, linking, commenting and drawing interactive boundaries around content) with the existing software tools I mentioned above. It will just need a little technical support, guidance and supervision—support which I am happy to provide!

So here are a set of provisional steps I propose we take along this path:

1) Install Moveable Type weblog software on Global Generation’s web server

Robin Daly and I should be able to work out the installation process (touch wood), and we now have the ftp details from Blake at the ready.

2) Plan, design and implement a Global Generation weblog using Moveable Type

We firstly need to sit down and discuss just what content and features you would like to have in the G.G. weblog. There are some great software tools I haven’t mentioned yet that would be well worth exploring to add interactivity and convenience to the site, so we can take a look at some of those. The planning process will also need to cover the way in which the G.G. weblog can function as a central resource and focus for the satellite weblogs of the individual and groups of kids taking part in G.G. projects, including use of newsfeeds, newsreader software and TypeKey authentification for comments to create a semi-closed community with the network of G.G. blogs.

Having done that planning process, I would recommend having a designer make a “look and feel”, including stylesheets for text formatting. This can be based on one of the templates that come with Moveable Type, thus saving time and money. Once you have this professional design, the implementation will be free (Robin and I should be able to do this fairly quickly), as will updating the site (which, of course, is the whole point of weblogs!). We may also like to think about creating templates for the kids’ weblogs at a later date.

I know two leading designers, who designed the two demos for kids- and i-together: Micael Reynaud at dunun.com and Jonathan Clark respectively. Micael is a lot cheaper and just as good—I used Jonathan for the second demo because the original and complex concepts we needed to implement necessitated a native English speaker (and he is a fabulous designer, well worth the money!). I would guess that we could have Michael customise a single template—based on the existing G.G. site, if you like—for around £150-250.

As I said, I’m happy to donate my time for the project. At the same time, I see this as a first step in establishing i-together itself, so perhaps we could put a link to i-together.net (which must be developed also!—we could link to my blog meanwhile) reading something like “made in association with i-together” on the G.G. weblog?

3) Plan supplementation of forthcoming offline Global Generation projects with online dimension

Brainstorming would be good for this, as there are so many possibilities! We can use text, images, video and audio, potentially. A caveat is that text and still image are most newsreader-friendly as the technology stands, which is perhaps why most weblogs focus on these media. But we can easily get round that limitation using links from textual descriptions of video or audio to the files themselves, so it’s just a question of thinking clearly about how to structure things. Live collaboration—as Blake mooted—is quite another thing! Also do-able, but technically much more involved. Any ideas, Keith?

This stage of planning will also clarify how best to structure the various weblogs—whether to have a main blog for each group and then sub-blogs for each kid, or just the kids who are particularly into the blogging idea, or not at all. Or start with the group blogs and let it build organically (often a good idea... many people start blogs, myself included, in the past, and let them peter out, lacking a sufficiently compelling reason to persevere).

It’s difficult to predict costs at this stage, but they are likely to be primarily from hardware such as digital cameras, digital video cameras, scanner, recording equipment. If things really take off, you’re looking at paying a premium for bandwidth—due to the millions of hits you’re getting on your site, so I’m sure you wouldn’t be complaining! Storage of the rich media (digital video files etc.) is progressively becoming a marginal cost as hard drives get cheaper year on year.

4) Implement online-offline G.G. projects

Stand back and light the blue touch-paper!


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So, I hope that’s all helpful and makes sense. I enthusiastically encourage you to communicate your ideas and feelings about the above, and to suggest any ways in which you feel you might like to get involved, by using the Comments facility below, rather than in personal emails to me. That way, we can get a debate going in one central location where everyone can get to know each other (and get used to using weblogs to collaborate and relate! : ))