The Locker Talker Notebook

Since I really didn’t have the time I wanted to put effort into making a visual mockup of the locker talker notebook, I figured that I would just dive into the explanation since the visual has really been shown pretty clearly with the Flip.com examples.

Anyway, here’s how it will work. There will be a library full of typical things that can look like anything from pictures to stickers (examples: soccer ball, flowers, smiley faces, poker cards, pretty much anything that can be represented with simple little clipart).

The layout with look like lined paper and the kids using the site would be able to put whatever they wanted into their notebook and it would be dated when it was made or edited or both.

The kids could also upload their own images. Pictures of themselves and friends, pictures of their celebrity crushes or even their real crushes and they could put those on a page of their notebook. It would basically serve as a giant scrapbook of their life and things they like.

Here’s where the news factor would come in. On the original news site, in all of the articles, there would be a little link underneath the articles and each of the pictures and videos that would say, “Add this to my library.” That way, let’s see the middle schooler ends up in the paper for the science fair or their big brother or sister happens to get a huge picture from a football game or volleyball or whatever, they could add that to their library along with their uploaded images. Within the notebook they could either link to the article, have a cutout looking thing with the article “pasted” on the notebook page or even just part of the article. It encourages the users to reuse the news in a way that’s important to them. Let’s say they go see a movie on opening weekend? They could put a good review of that movie on a page (this content coming from the news web site) with a screen cap picture from the movie (this would be uploaded from their computer—probably found in a Google image search).

Another feature of the notebook would be embedded video clips from Youtube, the could place on pages. I decided at first that the notebooks should remain completely private, much like someone’s individual diary is, but maybe eventually we could set up a way where they could choose to “Share” a page or two with other users if they design something really cool.

The notebook would also have like normal colors for drawing or painting and stuff that is totally doable in flash (like the Graffiti Wall on Facebook) so they could write what they want on the pages or add little touches with color. Basically it would be like a scrapbook that would encourage them to add articles and pictures straight from the news site about things that are important to them. A Hilary Clinton article if that’s who they support or even some political messages.

The notebook would be a smaller feature of the locker that would sit next to the books (which are groups we decided I think). They would click on the picture of the notebook and it would open up to the notebook. The editor would be after a different link. They would be able to add and delete pages where they wanted, see when the page was first created and last edited. They could edit or add to the pages as much as they wanted to. Having a user account is pretty much key to keeping the notebook since their personal libraries would be visible and useable only to the individual user while the public library of goods would be provided by the news provider.

How is this different from Flip.Com? Flip.com encourages their users to put advertisers of things they like on the web site and is geared extremely toward girls. This would be equally geared toward both and a little less cheesy. Not a ton of glittery signs saying AWESOME! or SO COOL! Flip also doesn’t encourage any newsworthy content like our site will. This is innovative in the fact that it encourages youngsters into the news, which is something almost no one does on the internet right now. Especially not in a way that is fun and cool.