One of the projects that seemingly has been put on hold forever has been the full fledged attempt to incorporate the Microsoft Team Services into the daily mix at GTPS. I really think that the blame for not having moved toward progress in this area lays at my feet. I can attribute this primarily to my stubborness with regard to the basic formulation of the Intranet. I have been trained in the early ways with regard to software systems design always with a push toward the classic top down approach. Starting with a global access point and allowing the user to drill down towards their ultimate destination within the system. Remember, when I wrote software we had to separate everything into three separate but equal systems, input, process, and output. Needless to say, that has completely changed. I have made the change on the hardware side to distributed systems and back again so I made it through that but for some reason as much as I have felt the change I really haven't made it over to the scrambled side of systems development. Not any more. Thanks to a great gift from Gary K. this Christmas coupled with some quiet time over the holiday weekend due to some bad weather I have seen the light or at least I read about it. The book is called Microsoft SharePoint 2003 "Unleased". It was written by Lynn Langfeld, Colin Spence, and Michael Noel and it is published by SAMS. The introduction to the book states the following " Organizations have been talking about knowledge management and leveraging their IT investments to enhance team collaboration for years but have had difficulty implementing effective solutions that tie together the wide range of information people need to access." Isn't that the case. In the GTPS district we sorta have a "one size fits all" approach to data. While this leapfrogs what is available in most districts it does not fit in to my plans for the long term. We are beginning to make extensive use of the "X" drive and as the staff learn about it more and more it is now time to put together a more cohesive system of information distribution. I have been discussing this with the Curriculum Department and it would appear that utilizing the system as its author's had intended is exactly what is necessary. Smaller not larger groups or departments or whatever is what is called for. Document libraries based on smaller functions with multiple links to separate the disciplines and subject matters is what we will strive to produce. I forsee multiple departmental websites where the staff can not only store but collaborate on in process work or anything else that can help the instructional process. Debriefing and many to one distribution ratios is what I am after with this project. The following two paragraphs outline it better than I:
" Information Technology has helped facilitate this collaborative effort through electronic documents that could be saved in a central location, and accessed by different individuals, as well as through the creation of databases designed to pool information and make it accessible to many people simultaneously. The advent of email started a dramatic shift in the way individuals communicated, and it was suddenly possible to target information at multiple people at once without calling a meeting or delivering memos by hand. Document management gradually became an issue as the numbe of documents and databases grew exponentially and seemed always to fill whatever storage space was available on the network. Organizations were challenged with finding ways of assembling their data to reflect the internal configuration of departments and divisions."
I used to use a simple saying when I was selling a network backplane or a star configuration to a customer. "Never put anyone more than one drop away from the fiber." If I could relate this adage to my proposed Intranet system I would now put it as follows: "No more drilling than necessary." We must find a way to limit the work involved in getting to the heart of any system. Only by breaking it into smaller more manageable pieces can we hope to do this. The designers of the SharePoint system may have been on to something with this approach. I am just sorry it took so long for me to grasp it.
Normally I would not venture out of the tech world but I have been reading some differing views on "Participatory Econonics Instead of Capitalism" and have found some interesting ideas as to what the effects of such a policy would be for us. Since Capitalism itself incorporates private ownership of the means of production, market allocation, and corporate divisions of labor. Remuneration is for property, power, and to a limited extent contribution to output. Class divisions arise due to property and also due to differential access to empowered versus obedient work. This does mean that huge differences in decision-making influence and quality of circumstances exist. Buyers and sellers one-up each other. The public reaps socail and ecological catastrophes that self-interested competition sows. That is a paraphase from a particulary good essay for a book that was supposed to appear at the ESF this past October. I can get a copy of the work if anyone is interested. Till next post.
12:05:30 PM 
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