Don S. has suggested an extension to the workspace tool that supports a structured set of sections, surrounded by tutorials, examples, and explanations (initially for technical writing, but the idea would work for other domains). Clickable links would go so editable workspace content or (static) explanatory material. Issues include:
- Switching between navigation and content
- We could keep the current workspace layout, with a thin navigation area on the side, along with user list and chat. (The user list could possibly be eliminated, depending on how content links are presented.) The bulk of the window would be devoted to content, which could either:
- Be presented as a single tile within the window, or
- Be presented as separate windows within on a desktop pane.
- We could switch to a brower-ish model, with a (larger) navigation panel. Clicking would hide the navigation panel and replace it with the content. A "Back" button of some sort would take the user back to the navigation panel.
- Rendering static content. Ideally the content could just be kept simple enough to be rendered as HTML in a text pane.
- Constructing navigation panel. Possibilities include:
- List of specific "blocks", structured based on templates
- HTML text, with links to content
- Existing navigation mechanisms (whiteboard and map)
- Rendering content links. Ideally these would be usable for MOOs and other containers, and would have:
- Name, possibly extracted from the linked content
- Type or template for dynamic content created on demand
- Indication of who/how many are viewing the object. We will need to consider scalability here for MOO-style applications, but for small-group workspaces this shouldn't be a problem.
- Indication of recent activity
- Annotation controls, either for text notes or image-based markup
- Other suggested features:
- Support for individual section editing, with "preview" for putting everything together
- Support for allowing teachers to track progress
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