Sorry for the delay in getting a post up on the blog. My computer decided to die on Tuesday morning and I just got things up and running. Thanks to Computer Stop and Computer & Applications in Bellevue for your help in getting my computer running in a timely matter with limited data loss.

Ok now down to business. In my “What is Scriptovia?” post I ended by saying I would post use cases that described to people how exactly Scriptovia could be used. This first post is on finding motivation to do schoolwork. For a lot of students writing an essay or doing a project is a big task. One of the biggest battles in getting that task done is getting started. I don’t know how many times I sat in front of a blank Word document at 11:30pm watching that little black cursor flash on and off, most of the time I just couldn’t figure out how to get started. Working in an isolated environment without the help of my peers or support from others in my situation made it even harder. All I needed was a little motivation from others who had done what I am about to do in order to get the ball rolling.

Scriptovia allows students to view other students’ schoolwork to find this motivation. After looking at the work of somebody else who was in a similar position, it is a lot easier to get started yourself. Say you are writing your first admissions essay for a university that you would like to attend. Having never written an admissions essay before the task seems a little daunting, but if you are able to look at other students admissions essays it becomes a bit easier to get started.

This concept has many other applications. When I was at Microsoft and was tasked with completing a functional specification, the first thing I would do is get on the intranet and take a look at other groups’ functional specs in order to get started. If you are planning on going bungee jumping or sky diving, you will most likely do it with a friend because you can offer each other motivation to take that leap of faith. Scriptovia takes this concept to the educational space where this type of support system doesn’t yet exist on a wide scale.