Posts Tagged ‘Depot’

Do you like (or hate) Depot? Want to help me assemble my 2009 to-do list? Please take a couple of minutes to complete this short, anonymous survey about Depot. I’ll take your feedback into consideration as I determine what’s next for Stratepedia’s flagship application.
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I’m preparing for a presentation this Friday, and just pulled up these statistics on Depot and the Learning Labs:

Depot:

• 2,740 accounts
• 86 groups
• 1,400 shared Content Enhancement examples
• 4,100 visits since January 2008
• 54,000 page views since January 2008

Learning Labs:

• 562 accounts
• 32 groups
• 4,800 visits since January 2008
• 42,000 page views since January 2008

These numbers were compiled using a combination of tracking built into each application, and Google Analytics. I know they aren’t staggering when compared to the likes of big media, search, or social networking sites, but for a couple of little sites served from little computers in my office, catering to a relatively niche audience, I don’t think they’re too bad.

I apologize to anybody who was trying to get into Depot over the last hour. A five-minute patch turned into a much more complex issue than I’d anticipated. Everything’s back up and running now.

I meant to get this out to you earlier this week, but you know how it is when you’re trying to get a funding proposal out, right? Anyway, that’s behind us, so I can get back to other matters like this one: I want to get a big update to Depot out the door by the end of the year.

Here’s the deal: I’m about to get started on some big, under-the-hood changes to Depot. I know, I know–the big reason moving from the Content Enhancement Library to Depot was for big, under-the-hood stuff. But Stratepedia’s web development platform of choice (OK, my web development platform of choice), Ruby on Rails, underwent some pretty big changes between when Depot was started and when it was finished, and especially between then and now. The long and short of it is I need to make some changes and want to get your input along the way. In that spirit, I’m offering this post as an open forum on what you like, what you hate, and what you’d like to see in Depot. Now’s the time to tell me!

I’ll get things started by telling you about two things I’m already addressing in this change, plus a possible bonus item:

• First, I know Depot sometimes gives weird error messages without telling you what’s going on. Most of these, I’ve found, are due to people not being signed in when trying to do something. This is exacerbated by our current policy of not requiring people to be signed in to browse public groups, but needing to be signed in and a member of said group to download from it. What are your thoughts on this policy? Right now I’m inclined to close things off a bit and tell people they need an account to do anything, even poke around the joint. By and large, people don’t even come across Depot until a PDer has introduced them to it during Content Enhancement PD, anyway. This will make access control settings much easier and therefore much less error-prone. Let me know what you think about this possible policy change.
• Second: Keyword search. I get asked for this a lot. It wasn’t feasible at all in the CE Library. It’s sort of feasible in the current Depot. It’s very feasible in Depot 2–I’m just trying to figure out the best way to do it. My current plan is to incorporate keywords as a filter (like we do now with subjects, grade levels, and routines). To one-up this, I’m looking at adding saved filter sets–so if you want to be able to easily find, say, every Unit Organizer about Ancient Egypt for middle school, matching the keyword “pyramids,” you can save a filter set and quickly pull up anything that’s been shared with you. What do you think–useful? No?

And now, the bonus: The long-promised single sign-on system for Stratepedia is making progress. This isn’t exclusive to Depot, and is technically a separate project, but will ideally be released simultaneously to this updated version of Depot. This basically means that, eventually, you’ll have one username/password combo for Depot, for the Learning Labs, for Coaching Calendar, for Depot, and for whatever we come up with down the road. It’ll also be the username and password you’ll use for anything at something-dot-kucrl-dot-org (like, say, an online version of Stratedirectory? Whisper, whisper).

OK, now it’s your turn.

Tell me what you think about the two items I mentioned above, or anything I missed. I know there are things that drive you nuts about Depot–tell me about them! Leave a comment below. If you want your comments to be anonymous, make up a name. If you’d like to keep your thoughts private you can e-mail me at help@stratepedia.org–but this will be a much more effective process if we can get a conversation going here.

Have at it!

Sometime this week, I’m going to shut down the S.O.S. (that’s “Stratepedia Online Support”) section of the Learning Labs. I thought providing a level of peer support was a good idea, but it never really caught on in this case and I think confused more than it helped. Not to worry: Our Stratepedia Guidebooks are still online, and you can always e-mail your questions to us at help@stratepedia.org.

If you have any questions about this transition, drop me an e-mail or leave a comment.

In other support-related news, Amber and I are in the process of revisiting and revising the aforementioned Guidebooks to make sure they address the kinds of questions we find ourselves answering more often than not. These new Guidebooks will be rolled out as we get them done and will be available for free in both web-based and PDF formats. The latter is suitable for printing, if that’s your liking.

We’re using a great new application I found a few weeks ago called ScreenSteps. It’s great for creating how-to guides for anything to be done on a computer, and can be exported to blogs (if you’ve been following my series on Goodreads you’ve seen ScreenSteps in action), straight HTML, or PDF. I think Depot’s Guidebook will be updated to this new format within the next few weeks; other guidebooks will follow.

But that’s not all! Keep following Hello (the blog you’re reading right now) for tutorials, case studies, and anything else that might not fit within the context of our guidebooks. If you’ve got tips or success stories to share with others, let us know and we’ll showcase your work within Hello’s virtual pages.

To recap: S.O.S. is going away, the Guidebooks are staying put but will be getting a significant facelift (and PDF versions), and we want to showcase your tips and successes on our blog. Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who attended the Stratepedia sessions at last week’s conference in Kansas City. I know we were up against some big hitters, so I appreciate you stopping in to visit with us. Here are the slides from our first presentation–I’ll have Amber upload the Learning Labs-related slides sometime today.

You can download the slides from our Depot and Content Enhancement presentation (PDF format) or view it below via SlideShare.

Unfortunately these slides don’t include the hands-on portions of our presentations, but they should serve as a good overview of some of the things you can do with Depot to aid Content Enhancement professional development. Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

I’ve had some changes ready to apply to Depot sitting on the back burner for awhile–in the interest of getting them in place in plenty of time for the conference I’m planning to push them out to the server over the holiday weekend. Downtime should be very minimal, since the changes are mostly cosmetic.

Gail Cheever had an awesome idea–instead of lugging along stacks of paper as handouts for Neatest Things: Content Enhancement, she’s posting them to the Models for Professional Development group in Depot. You can too!

If you’re a Depot user and have CE examples to share at the conference, contact Gail or me for information on accessing the group. It takes a minute or less to get started, but after that you can easily share your CE files with other attendees at the conference, not to mention those who couldn’t make it.

Don’t forget to attend our session Using Stratepedia Depot for Content Enhancement Support to learn everything there is to know about using Depot for professional development! I think we’re scheduled for sometime Thursday morning. Come say hello!

Thanks to Gail for the great idea!

There’s a new group on Depot for anyone using Content Enhancement in professional development. Sign in, click the Groups link, and locate Models for Professional Development. You’ll need a membership key to join–drop me a line at help@stratepedia.org and I’ll hook you up. Thank you to Gail Cheever for the suggestion!

Do you need a Depot group to collaborate within a school or content area? Great news: You can create your own groups in Depot! Just go to Groups and then click Create a Group, fill out the short form, and you’re ready to roll. Not quite sure how this works? That’s OK–just ask me a day or two ahead of time and I’ll set up a group for you. Better yet, come to our Depot presentation at the SIM conference this summer and become a Depot pro!