If you look at the list of suggestions submitted by Hschooler.net members, you’ll quickly see that the most requested feature is Chat or Instant Messaging. It has been suggested by four different members.

We want you to know that we aren’t ignoring these requests.

However, there are a couple of major issues that we need to deal with before implementing Chat or IM on Hschooler.net.

The first is fairly tactical. The web, by it’s nature, is a static, page-based medium. You load a web page and it sits there waiting for you to do something. Since the web was introduced back in the early 1990s, many advances have enabled the web to become more dynamic. Flash and Javascript are probably the two most important technologies in enabling a web page to be interactive without being reloaded or without going to a different page. However, it’s tricky to implement these technologies, especially in a way that doesn’t either overload the web browser or overload the web server.

Thankfully, others have developed Chat/IM plugins for the platform we use for Hschooler.net. However, these are designed to work with newer versions of the platform than we’re currently running with Hschooler.net. I expect we’ll upgrade the platform this summer, which will allow us to try out different Chat/IM plugins and hopefully implement one that meets our needs.

The second issue is more strategic. What sets Hschooler.net apart from other online social networks is our focus on creating a safe environment that is honoring to God and is family-centered, recognizing the God-given authority of parents. As with other tools in Hschooler.net, it’s important to us to give parents the ability to set the boundaries for their family members. Some family members may not yet be ready for IM/Chat, while others clearly are and should be given significant freedom.

But with Chat and Instant Messaging, there’s more than just the trustworthiness of the family member involved. We’ve all heard horror stories of Internet chat and instant messaging problems that threaten the safety of our families. None of us at Hschooler.net want to have our service become part of another horror story. We believe that giving parents the option of complete visibility into the conversations their family members are having through Hschooler.net is an important part of maintaining our mission and our differentiation.

That means that, once we find an existing package that provides the functionality that we think our users want, we will still need to invest significant development time into making our Chat/IM implementation Hschooler-ready.

In the meantime, we appreciate your patience! Please continue to send us your feedback, suggestions, and ideas.

There’s a new book out that you may find interesting. Windows PCs in the Ministry by Steve Hewitt (Thomas Nelson, 2010) starts with this description: “This book will present a variety of ways to use technology to enhance and expand ministry using Windows programs and Internet services.” And that it does - the Table of Contents alone is 5 pages long! I know Steve as the editor of Christian Computing World, which I’ve been reading off and on for almost 20 years, and have been contributing to for the past year.

But the real reason for this post is to celebrate what Steve has to say about Hschooler.net in the book.

Pages 78 - 119 deal with social networking, so it is a major theme in the book. Steve starts the section by saying “Social networking has established a strong foothold in our society, and one that will undoubtedly continue to grow.” The first subsection is “Problems, Concerns and Warnings” setting the tone for much of the chapter. Steve delves into major social networking services including MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. He describes the ways in which these popular services can be used for evangelism and for connecting with other believers. He also deals with the concerns and issues with each. He also provides an entire section on “How Can I Protect My Children on Social Networking Sites?” This is a great resource for parents!

Next, Steve delves into “Christian Alternatives for Social Networking” providing profiles of nine different Christian social networking services. He closes this section with a subsection titled “Warning to Parents” which starts this way: “If the purpose of allowing your children to use a Christian social networking site instead of Facebook is for security, you need to give this some thought. On many of the sites I visited, I found less security than on Facebook.”

The very next subsection is “One Christian Social Networking Site Gets Two Thumbs Up.” Guess who he’s talking about… Yep, Hschooler.net.

“After expressing my concerns about security for young people using social networking sites, even Christian social networking sites, I can recommend one site for those that want a site centered on security and safety for their family.”

Thanks Steve!

I hope and pray that we can continue to improve our service’s ability to meet the unique needs of Christian families.

Recently, I’ve subscribed to newsfeeds from Crosswalk. Jim Liebelt in particular has written some really interesting articles, especially for parents who care about the impact of the Internet on their families. I thought I’d point you to a few of them:

• Jim observed that it’s a “Good Idea to Limit Kids’ Media Screen time“
• Jim also observed that “Video Games Tied to Aggression“
• He reported that “Facebook Users Average 7 Hours a Month“
• And “Tech-savvy ‘iGeneration’ Kids Multi-task, Connect“
• Jim also shared that “Teen Blogging Declines While Popularity of Social Media Sites Increases“
• And to cap it all off: “Teens Do Better With Parents Who Set Limits“

I look forward to continuing to keep up with Jim’s observations on media and our kids.

We’ve added a new feature to Hschooler.net - the ability to create photo albums and upload photos to share with your friends!

While this is an exciting new feature that we expect to be very popular, we also realize that photos are a sensitive type of content. Parents are rightfully concerned about both whether their kids are uploading unsafe pictures (e.g. pictures that expose too much personal information or pictures that are embarrassing to the kids or their friends) and whether their kids are viewing pictures with inappropriate content. Given that our focus at Hschooler is creating a fun and safe environment that recognizes the God-given authority of parents, before introducing Photos, we knew we had to build in safeguards for this feature.

To address the first concern (kids uploading pictures), Photos is a feature that must be enabled by parents. Until it is enabled, a user can’t upload any photos. That means that the Photos feature is only available to members that have upgraded to a Family account. We believe that’s the right decision for creating a safe environment. By the way, as with all tools in Hschooler, parents can set boundaries for how broadly their family members can share Photos. A parent might decide that a younger child should only share photos with family members until she can demonstrate that she’s using good discretion.

To address the second concern (what kids can see), parents can also set boundaries for whose photos each family member can see. For example, a parent might set the boundary so that a student can see photos from “trusted friends” but not “all friends”. (By the way, if you ever see any inappropriate content in Hschooler, please click the “Report this” link in the top left corner of most windows in Hschooler.net.)

Every member that has Photos enabled gets 10MB of free storage for photos. We encourage members to set their digital camera to take lower resolution photos, or use a photo editing tool (like Photoshop or Paint.net) to reduce the resolution so that they can store dozens of photos in that 10MB. Once the first 10MB are filled with photos, additional storage can be purchased with Tuits - the virtual currency within Hschooler.net.

Check out the video tutorial for Enabling and Managing Photos and the video tutorial for using Photos.

We never got around to announcing the launch of the To Do Tasks tool and widget, although it’s been out for a couple of months.

This tool allows you to create an assignment for yourself and/or others. You can then provide updates on it and change the status. A dashboard widget can show tasks assigned to you, tasks assigned by you, or tasks assigned to everyone in your family. The color of the tasks in the widget show the status and warn you when a task is almost due. You can also “check off” tasks as completed in the widget.

One task can be assigned to multiple people if it’s a team assignment. A task can also have sub-tasks which is especially useful for team projects (e.g. creating a newsletter, where different team members are responsible for different sub-tasks for completing the entire project).

A task can also be set up as recurring, for example for chores that need to be repeated every day (make your bed) or maybe once a week (collect trash around the house).

You can check out a tutorial for this feature here.

Let us know what you think!