Development process

We're experimenting with just the right way to explain the Vital Signs community. Check out our latest and greatest, and let us know what you think....

The Vital Signs site is featured today on the Drupal homepage! The Drupal Community has responded enthusiastically with great comments and even one bug report. It's neat to see the list of 13 original custom Drupal modules Shawn has contributed to the Drupal world, all including "VS" or "Vital Signs" in the module names. Check out the Drupal homepage for a neat tech perspective on the hows and whys and ways this site ticks.

“This is one of the best looking Drupal sites I’ve ever seen!”

So who actually built this incredible, open source website anyway?

GMRI partnered with Image Works, a local tech shop specializing in website design, database development, and interactive kiosks, to oversee our tricky design and development process.....

We've been pretty good at keeping track of our Vital Signs development process on a different blogging site. This will ultimately be its new home. Until we move house, please follow our blog here: Vital Signs Hard Fun 2009.

All ready for 37 new Vital Signs teachers to use with their students this coming fall!

Petri has started working on the look & feel of the VS website. Your sneak peek....

All of a sudden our data review process has taken shape. Here's how we think it'll play out:

Expert Review
Sarah & Sarah will assign specific species to selected "experts." These expert reviewers will have the power to change the status of species identifications from Pending to Confirmed or Questioned. They will then suggest a different identification (as necessary), and leave a comment.

These special reviewers will be given this “expert reviewer status" on their profile page (community participation statistics).

Peer/ Community Review

We're trying on a new approach to reporting species. See how it fits.

Species was FOUND by Username on 2008-11-26 in Portland

Species was looked for but NOT FOUND by Username on 2008-11-26 in Portland

Gettin' tough on data entry

As the data entry wireframes shape up, we've had to make a few tough decisions:

1. No "Practice Data Entry" interface or separate website. It was a nice dream while it lasted. We've since convinced ourselves that practicing how to input data isn't really the learning we're after and slim chance it would improve data quality. Instead we'll encourage those who like practicing to do so with the paper form. Everyone else will just jump right in.

We keep hearing from teachers that they want to "see it" before they "do it," so we started collecting how-to videos moons ago. The plan is to shoot more more more....building equipment, preparing for trips, collecting data, identifying certain species, telling look-alike species apart, eating invaders....