Earlier this year, we partnered with Dave Eggers and TED and launched Once Upon a School. The initial release of the site was done completely in-house ?- UX, design, development — in just SIX WEEKS! It was a pretty hefty task, but we successfully delivered a site where people could pledge ideas for school engagement and read about completed projects. Since it was such a quick turn-around for us, we always knew we wanted to iterate on the initial success. So it is exciting to announce that with the help of Carbon Five and TED, we just launched the redesign of Once Upon a School.
I’ve been part of the team from the beginning… actually switched hats from designer to developer and built the first release of OUAS. I’ve also spent the last 11 months maintaining and supporting it. So trust me when I tell you that I LOVE THE NEW SITE! The design itself is more inspirational and encourages you all to read the stories. We’ve pulled out all the stops with visuals with this redesign. For example, those cool background images are pulled straight from the stories that were submitted to the site over the last year. Here are some of the? other new features I can’t help but show off:
More, More, More!! Featured stories on the homepage
With the new design we can now highlight a handful of stories at once and feature a multimedia piece. Right now it’s Dave’s popular TED Wish presentation, but since I got the inside scoop, we will be changing that out soon to something even cooler, as well as announce the TED Challenge winners.
Inspired to make a difference? Find a volunteer opportunity near you.
Once Upon a School has partnered up with Volunteer Match, so you can now find a volunteer opportunity near you. Be inspired, help a local school and start writing your own story.
Can’t find what you’re looking for? Try the new story search.
We are super excited that the guys at Carbon Five were able to get search into this release. Search is a small part of a bigger plan for a more comprehensive way to find the stories that you want to read. Stay tuned for more updates to this feature, but for now take it for a spin… it can be found on the all story pages.
We now support video
You asked and we delivered! Once Upon a School has been accepting a variety of media since launch, but we now have the ability to showcase your story’s videos. So now when you submit a story you can embed a video too. These videos will not only be showcased with the story in the new, fancy media module (seen above), but highlighted on every listing throughout the site.
So congrats to all that have worked on OUAS and I hope all of you love the new site just as much as I do.
