Re: case studies and school counts + one idea ( Re: [seul-edu] School Count new page)

[Michael Viron <mviron@findaschool.org>]

>The point is that it is _her_ list: here is evidence of
>a single person, not associated with any organization, a
>student perhaps, that felt strongly enough about the idea
>to put some energy into it. I think that SEUL and Schoolforge
>should find ways to preserve and highlight evidence of that
>kind of energy and interest. In any case, I hope that Jennifer 
>doesn't stop maintaining her list. I hope she keeps making the list
>bigger and bigger until it crawls out onto the street and 
>takes over the world.

While it certainly is possible to deal with such websites individually, I'd
like to suggest that at a certain point, it becomes very difficult to
update a 'links' / informational page with just one person.  With 35
different records on her site, Jennifer's is still quite small (Don't get
me wrong, it is a good site, but it is much easier to maintain a page that
has 35 'records' on it with one person, than it is once you start getting
up to the hundreds or even thousands).

General Education Online (http://www.findaschool.org), for example, which
began as an individual project, slowly became too large for a single person
to update / maintain.  In October 1995, when GEO first started, it was a
set of about 20 static html files containing around 400 - 500 links, where
updates could be handled in a reasonable amount of time by one person.

By 1999, GEO had grown to 5,800 links in over 170 files.  By that point,
complete updates to the entirely static site were taking a minimum of 6
months and the efforts of up to 3 people.

Since then, GEO has gone to a dynamic, database driven website, providing
nearly 8,000 links (looking at being up to 10,000 within the next year or
two).  Updates are currently handled by one person (since no individual
files have to be edited) and take upwards of 2 weeks to complete.

GEO currently has 3 (sometimes 4) people that are the main maintainers and
developers of the site.  This makes GEO possible.

Just a thought,

Michael

--
Michael Viron
Registered Linux User #81978
Senior Systems & Administration Consultant
Web Spinners, University of West Florida