Westport Learning Network

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The WLN's login screen

The WLN Teacher View

The Westport Learning Network, "WLN" in short, was a system originally designed by Nathan Faber and Shant Vosgueritchian, to inform students who were either absent or just not paying attention in class to figure out what they were required to do at home before the following day. In other words, it was a system that enabled teachers to post assignments, view their schedule and class lists, send messages to students and to entire classes, post and view grades (not official report cards, but the type that would often be posted on the classroom wall), post class agendas, and post files and links to websites (that can be attached to assignments). Students were able to view their schedules, view and organize their assignments into folders (either the New and Finished folders or their own custom folders), their attendence record, and their locker combination, and were able to send messages to their teachers (but not to other students...at least not directly).

The WLN was based on the Homework System, created collaboratively by the Computer Club, which allowed teachers to post assignments. The Computer Club successfully got the Science Department to pilot the system, and when the Teacher's Center realized its potential in May of 2000, they hired Nathan and Shant to design the new WLN. (Michael Mulligan was also supposed to work on the project, providing his graphic design skills, but it didn't work out.) Working with the Teacher's Center provided the advantage that they were able to integrate the system with the school's systems, so that the WLN wouldn't need a separate user database and would already have accurate scheduling information. It authenticated users against the NT domain, and synchronized with various school databases every night. As with the Homework System, the WLN was first piloted to the Science Department in October of 2000 (most of the work was done over the summer and it was up and running in September, being tested by members of Computer Club such as Tom Hessman), and was eventually used by the entire school. Nathan and Shant continued to improve the WLN afters its launch, improving the calendar and agenda views, adding parent access, and creating the Y-drive system (which was originally integrated in the WLN and only allowed downloading of files, but was expanded to allow uploads into a Drop Box directory and made separate so that all schools could use it).

On April 12, 2001, the WLN won the ArsDigita Prize.

In 2004 Rob Rogers and Sara Scrofani started a movement to replace the WLN with a newer, outsourced solution, and for the 2005-2006 school year EChalk officially replaced the WLN.

There is a separate system, known as the WLN 2.0 or WLN Jr., which was created by the Teacher's Center (not by Nathan and Shant) for use by the middle and elementary schools. It aimed to provide similar functionality, but was in fact very different. The name WLN 2.0 is very misleading because it is only based on the high school WLN conceptually, even though the name would suggest that the code is based on the high school WLN and is an improvement over it. WLN Jr. is still in use.