Prev | Next | About

Introductions

Walsall Schools org is run by two long time bloggers. Steve Hooker who runs the technology and Lee Baker who's a blogging teacher in Walsall.

Steve has been running and developing a weblog server since mid 2000, for a variety of blogging communities as well as individuals and small businesses. He has also been pivotal in the development of the Government Office for the West Midland's intranet and external sites, which run on the same platform as these school blogs.

Lee has been blogging using the same site and technology since mid 2001 and has come to know the software and blogosphere very well. Blogging about his main passion, Aston Villa Football Club he's used many of the power features and even added some of his own.

Since 2003 Lee has badgered Steve into providing a blogging service for schools. Recently, Steve complied and built Walsall Schools dot org as a community dedicated to all the schools in Walsall.

Where to?

Why Walsall? We know it, Lee works here, and Steve used to live in Chuckery. Lee wanted the service so his schools could benefit from the ease and power, Steve thought, "may as well do it for all schools in Walsall, then we can do fun things interconnecting them."

It's the interconnection that will be where the ultimate usefulness of the platform truly shines. Going past all the teaching and communication benefits of blogs in schools, to the power of the network, the network of schools will be much, much bigger than the mere sum of its parts. Consider:

• simultaneous classroom interactions
• teacher help and resource centres
• events co-ordination

We've set it all up as a dot org because we're not so arrogant to think that we'll own the show. Sure we'll own the platform, but the content and the community? We want to serve the community not own it. It would be like owning a natural resource—education is a Walsall, UK and world right. It would be like BT owning the conversations passing along its wires.

We don't want to lock people in! One of the benefits of out technology is that you can export your entire site and take it elsewhere! So, if ever you're not happy with us, you can move. We want to provide a service that makes you want to stay, not because you have to.

One day, we'll hand over the keys to the dot org, to a fitting organisation, probably a committee of headmasters from Walsall.