J-Learning

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Project: J-Learning

www.j-learning.org
Launched on August 29, 2005
Education / Non-Profit, Teach People

Blog:Read about this project on the blog

Working with J-Lab, Hop Studios produced an ambitious, challenging, fascinating project: A comprehensive how-to guide for community journalism sites. It’s done, and it’s called J-Learning, and it’s worth a look.

The project was funded by J-Lab, The Institute for Interactive Journalism.  J-Lab is based at the University of Maryland, and has a really noble mission: to promote innovative news experiments that improve public life.

Well, when J-Lab approached us to help them develop this multi-phased project, we were thrilled. Working together, we’ve created an example of well-done community-service Web site that encourages discussion on and around the topic of building community, reporting news, and creating well-run Web sites. The site is currently 81 articles, 75,000 words, 180 images, and a heck of a lot of work.

And in the mean time, it’s also a wonderful example of a working community news and information site that includes a raft of features:

  • per article commenting
  • discussion forums
  • an article rating system
  • an auto-detectable syndication feed
  • it’s all done with really efficient and snazzy CSS layouts
  • it adjusts to any size monitor
  • it has a collapsable navigation bar that remembers its state as you navigate the site
  • you can subscribe to certain articles to keep track of discussion
  • there’s private messaging and a member list
  • the site search is extremely powerful

This site is a companion to J-New Voices (j-newvoices.org).

"Hop Studios has built three web sites for us and is redesigning a fourth. They are all distinctive sites that are easy for users to navigate and easy for us to update. And we couldn't ask for designers who are better listeners or more responsive to our needs."
Jan Schaffer
Executive Director