Serendipity35

Last week I wrote about the "creepy treehouse" and included a brief reference to a course management system in Facebook. That generated a comment from Michael Staton (listed on LinkedIn as Co-founder and Chief Meeting Officer at Courses on Facebook). His company, Inigral, had created Courses on Facebook, and now they are testing Schools with Abilene Christian University as a way to extend the capabilities of Facebook. I actually had posted about Schools a week earlier. I thought I should post some clarification here today (especially since any readers probably never read the comments).

Michael commented:
Hey Ken,
First, thanks for the shout.
I like the uncanny valley analogy and hadn't previously considered it - that there's a curve to the acceptedness.
I can assure you that Facebook is not developing a CMS. I can also assure you that if it did it would not even remotely kill Facebook. Facebook is no longer where kids go to hang out, it's a masterful social utility that is unparalleled on the internet in terms of usability and performance.
We developed a free CMS on Facebook and we found out that students don't want to do coursework or manage coursework. But they do want to connect and build relationships with their peers. So, that's what were working on now. It's called Schools.
Anyway, hope that clarifies some things.
Best,
Michael Staton (Homepage) on 2008-09-05 23:08

Brother Tim says:
"While I thought your point was clear, I think Staton missed it. And as far as CMS's go, I think Drupal is the current King of the Hill  It is so malleable that it can be hammered  into almost any IT shape and that could prove to be its undoing.  Drupal is just a few management modules (easy to write because of its drop-in plug-in framework) from becoming Moodle and that might be a mistake. While content management systems can emulate the community environment (I'm thinking virtual PTA), no one wants the PTA inside the classroom except for maybe cupcakes and juice on birthdays and holidays."

Staton did a guest post about Schools and their testing with Abilene Christian University at the end of July:
"We are introducing a product we're calling "Schools on Facebook" (in private beta) that is a private, secure application (on Facebook) that can be skinned with a schools branding and connect with their current technology infrastructure.  It doesn't compete with but complements CMS and LMS systems by focusing on socialization and relationship building."

By the way, Inigral also has a product called Standardissimo that helps K-12 "discover and manage media, lessons, and assessments aligned to state standards.  That sounds interesting too.

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