The Activity Workshop

Have you ever had an idea for an activity that you wanted to get a lot of feedback on? That's what the Activity Workshop is for!

With this new feature, you can set one of your activities to "Workshop Mode" which makes it show up prominently on the front page of the site under a specific section for it. I haven't coded the limits in yet, but I thought it would be best to have one Workshop activity per user at a time, and for the Workshop Mode to last for one week before the activity gets converted into a normal activity. You'll find the Workshop Mode button in the controls when you look at one of your activities.

This feature is reserved for paid supporters of the site, similar to avatars. My goal is for supporters to get useful extra features like this, but not to make anyone feel like they're being limited. I'd like for people to feel like they're getting something cool in exchange for helping the site pay its hosting bill.

If you're interested in this feature, please check out the Patreon page to sign up and I can upgrade your account to a Supporter account. My plan is to eventually switch to directly purchasing Supporter features through the site. It'll take a while to integrate a payment processor and keep track of everything, but I'm excited to give it a shot.

I value the site's independence a lot. In April I left my previous employer of several years and it's made me think about all the hoops we have to jump through as ALTs. We have to reinvent the wheel a lot, dive headfirst into complex staff dynamics at school and with our employers, and make last-second adjustments because we're often not kept in the loop. But we still do our best to make English class fun and productive. I hope that I can keep the site running through direct user support instead of advertising or a corporate parent. I'll update everyone as time goes on!