Jamroom - in the flesh and blood

Hi there! Firstly - please let me introduce myself - I'm Mark and I work alongside SteveX (who has brilliantly developed our workbook installation of Jamroom at our University!). He's opened my eyes to how good the platform is - and we're hoping to make a virtue of its effectiveness in delivering our open education resources...

...which brings me onto my second point (well, question really): does anyone have experience of innovative ways of demoing Jamroom in a training environment? Actually, let me rephrase that, does anyone know of innovative ways of showing Jamroom in all its glory that doesn't involve me standing at the front of a big room and pointing at things on the screen? Any ideas (and experiences!) much appreciated. I'll let you know how we get on too...

Cheers
Mark!
updated by @riggster: 01/22/17 02:53:50AM

Welcome to Jamroom Mark

Standing in front of people and demoing Jamroom in all it's glory sounds like a marvelous time


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Hi Mark - Steve told us to expect you.
As for your question, I'll have to think about that for a bit. Maybe the others here will chip in.
Cheers
Paul


--
Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

You mean leave the cave and go outside? people do that?

No experience here sorry. Just on youtube and yeah its hard. Mainly because its difficult to know at what level to explain it.

I started to like jamroom a few years ago for the the following reasons:
* The code was written in a way that I would write the code if I had written it so it was easy to understand when reading it.
* It was always under active development and releases just kept coming. You rarely had to hack anything, you'd just ask and a way to do it got added in to the core. So it was good for developers to build stuff on.

Since then its kind of taken a different turn from a useful tool for developers to looking more toward non-developers and what they need too. The roots are still there of a great system for developers too and they have gotten better. EVERYTHING is a module and modules can talk to each other. So if you were talking to developers, then everything being a module and all modules being about to pass data around and override stuff before it gets to the end user is a great thing to talk about.

The "Events and Listeners" system allow one module to alter other modules data before it reaches the screen. The "Datastore" system allows other modules to add extra data to any modules database without the need to alter the database structure. The routing system allows modules to override a different modules claim to a URL or to provide extra URL's to extend modules without even knowing about them (check out "Magic Views").

So thats what gets me excited. On another level is what that enables you to build and what has been built.

Because all that exists, Site Builder exists which is the drag-n-drop skin system that allows non-coders to access the modules to bring get the data they're interested in displaying out to wherever they want to display it. Not everyone is a coder. So if its non-coders you're talking to, you'd probably be showing this system along with related modules. Perhaps talking about the structure of the system, how the focus of the system is the profiles and the main part of the site is just a way to showcase what exists on the profiles.

Perhaps the separation of profiles into quotas to allow different allocation of resources to different groups of people. Depends on whether you're talking to people who want to setup their own site and explain how it works, or people who are going to be using an existing site.

Hard to know where to begin.

Thanks guys - and thanks for Jamroom! I particularly appreciate the ethos of looking towards non-developers and what they want to do - it adds to the system feeling organic and responsive to real needs!

I should probably have described the proposed training a little better - it's less for developers and more for end-user. Well, primarily for a community able to create content with zero developer experience through (the Jamroom-based) active and friendly front-end that Steve's created. All useful stuff though!

I probably need to go away with a pencil and some paper - and a healthy dose of head scratching - and give some thought as to how to engage a (large) room of people with any site. I'd like to get them moving around the room... maybe in teams... maybe some profile/module human roleplay... these are possibly terrible ideas... I'm just thinking out loud... (I'll let you know how it goes). Cheers! Mark

There's still more division possibilities even after you've settled on "non-developers" as your chosen target audience.

Are the audience going to be ADMINISTERING a jamroom site or using it from a 'member of the site' perspective. If its administering, then the concepts that are hardest to get you're head around are the separation of USER, PROFILE, QUOTA in setting up the system.

Docs: "Jamroom Admin Handbook : Table of Contents"
https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/documentation/jamroom-admin-handbook

It seams like you'll be talking to members who will be using a site that you and steve have setup, so that link's probably not so relevant to them.

For you're case how you've setup the system rather than what the system is is what you'll be explaining. Explaining that there are different types of profile ('how you've setup the quotas') and what each one is for. Their similarities: each profile is the canonical home to any piece of content albeit that piece of content can be shown in other locations on the site.

Some profiles have different things on them ( modules via quotas ) but they're still profiles. You'll be focusing on the flow of using your site to achieve goals. Hopefully the site gets out of the way all together so you can just focus on the goals of the site which is getting the user to understand the subject matter i believe.

Saw some of the modules stevex made to extend the Docs module, real cool.

Sounds like what I'm going to try to do with a room full of 60+ year old members of my Lodge when we move all the Lodge communication / administration to a web based JR site.

The first thing I'm going to do is get the room excited showing everyone what can be done with the new system.

Then I'm going to break key aspects of the site into session blocks. Each session is going to go in-depth into 1 specific thing. I'll assign a task related to the session topic at the end of the session for each member to complete.

Each new session is going to start with a rehash of the older sessions.

Added: creating a training site is also helpful. Let people know that the purpose of the training site is to learn, breaking things is encouraged.

In the end, personal interaction with the site is the best education IMO.
updated by @jimmy: 10/14/16 05:45:15PM

Thanks guys. Yes, breaking things down (whether by audience or aspects of the site) is definitely the way to do it!

Michael - your focus on letting the site get out of the way of the goals is very useful. An obvious strength of Jamroom to seasoned users and, now, an essential benefit to relative new users like myself. Flow is very important - what the users want to achieve and their path to getting there.

Jimmy - your audience sound like the type of users we're dealing with here. In the end we based the session around a speed-dating style of approach. 5 tables - 5 different workbooks (our terminology) and the actual editors talking about their own creations. The room splits into 5 and moves around clockwise every 10 or so minutes.

The whole experience was incredibly informative and rewarding. We got to tell people about what we were doing and gain some insight into the experiences of (an admittedly tiny) group of users. Taking the session away from the larger group and allowing more informal discussion gave the opportunity for more voices to be heard and in greater detail. A success!