Illustration of a mockup screen of the Tiny prototype
The prototype tool to support international, ad-hoc and serendipitous classroom collaboration moving forward. We call the prototype Tiny, because students can send, search, read, favorite and comment “tiny status messages” about school projects. No additional log-in will be required, and everyone can see the same content.
Tiny addresses the wish of students and teachers to collaborate with schools across their city, country and beyond. Other software supports teachers to collaborate with other classes, also internationally, on larger longer-term projects. Through Focus Group sessions with teachers and students across Europe, we found that ad-hoc and serendipitous, student driven collaboration is wished for as well. Tiny gives students the opportunity to take responsibility about letting others know about their work and learning about the work of others, distantly located students. Further, through communication in Tiny, students may decide to arrange synchronous online meetings to learn from each other. Currently, we are implementing an HTML based version of Tiny. The post “Sessions paper prototype” provides some background and early paper prototypes of Tiny.
