Student Wiki Web

WikiWeb focused on students (esp College Education).

first drafted at http://billseitz.tiddlyspace.com/#StudentWikiWeb

Basic concept:

WikiEngine that can be run cheaply/easily

• for single person having multiple spaces (Private Wiki, WikiLog) (e.g. from their Blue Host account)
• to easily support a few friends, each having multiple spaces, from that hosting
• to host hordes of users (e.g. at a university)

User should want to keep using it for decades, possibly moving the content from host to host.

• so as soon as it is hosted in the cloud, it should have a hostname in a domain owned by the user, so the URLs never change.

UseCases:...

• person uses it as his Private Wiki NoteBook/Journal
• same person uses it for his WikiLog
• same person uses it for classes
  • some access/rights given to teacher
  • some access/rights given to co-students
    • usually course-membership-driven
      • teacher manages central list/directory of students in that class (ID and space for each student), student can give that group access
      • student can then choose to turn off access for that group at end of class
    • student may choose to continue to give access to certain individuals (past class-members, anyone else)

Features - core

• easy to maintain/admin (for university)
• easy to install on cheap hosting (for individual) (you should be able to support a few friends, too)
• BackLinks
• support for some Single Sign-On mechanism would be good
• InterWiki features like Twin Pages/Sister Sites

Features - probably needed

• Purple Numbers for reference from outside
  • for in-space discussion, I tend toward just encouraging ThreadMode instead of attaching some separate Discussion Forum or Annotation System.
    • note this works for a single shared TeamWiki - how do it in a distributed WikiWeb? WikiWebDialogue...
    • actually it doesn't really work in a TeamWiki either - I always end up relying on Email Discussion Beside Wiki.
• page-graph visualization tool like Touch Graph (goes along with BackLinks)
• support for non-simpletext content?
  • Mind Map, WikiPage As MindMap
  • Sketching? Or should that be in separate app that saves as SVG, and WikiEngine should make it easy to include a sketch in a page?
  • math equations? I wonder how many math students try to take notes by computer instead of paper? I'd assume it isn't workable, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover otherwise. Mathematica

Why am I interested in Student (esp College Education) market?

• because they do lots of note-taking
• they are more likely to engage in reflective thinking than most other population groups
• unlike techies, they don't want to build/customize/install their own Open Source software.
• so I see them as a good early-adoptor market leading to Wiki Everywhere.
• counter-argument: collaboration (everyone belong to multiple groups) pushes toward a demand for standardization, which turns adoption into an Enterprise sales model.
  • how about Home-Schooled High School students?

Aside from software features, this approach probably needs

• "packaging" of marketing communications that university people can find
• some sort of "institution" designed to dialogue with university people. That may not need to be a big corporation, but a single consultant would probably not provide the pretense of longevity necessary to make adoptors feel safe.

a competitor: 2011-11-25-CunyCollegeCommonsInABox