eSpace was originally created by Dr. Matthew Stuve and Alex Crespi between 2000 and 2002. The original was developed in house and was written in Lasso using a MySQL database, all running on the first generation Xserve that has had a nearly 13 years operational life. It was the first project of its kind at Ball State, a resource designed to engaged K-12 teachers, students, and teacher educators in knowledge construction and online collaboration.
While eSpace 1.0 was pretty nifty, development reached is plateau, Alex moved away, and open source solutions emerged with adequate functionalities that allow us now to focus on content production rather than portal programming.
Starting in 2004, Kevin Jordan and I started tinkering with Movable Type as a platform to which we would move eSpace. As a Content Management System (CMS), Movable Type allowed us to customize our pages and support multiple blogs through eSpace. We kept using the Lasso eSpace and treated Movable Type as blogging too and not a construction, exhibit-building tool like eSpace was.
Around 2006, I started tinkering with WordPress which I liked better than MT. In 2010, David Schultz was my GA du jour and he helped me set up a full site for WordPress with a custom theme built on Atahualpa. Our goal at this time was to support “content communities” on a BSU domain. eSpace 1.0 was still running but it was at this time that I decided that the new WordPress server (we called Prism) WAS what we envisioned for eSpace years ago. It had gained enough functionalities to serve our eSpace needs and add the community functions of WordPress. We created at this time the notion of AN eSpace, as a place and community to replace similar, museum metaphors we had in the original Lasso eSpace.
Over the years, we have had several contributors that have brought shape to eSpace, filling it with helpful content for students, educators and researchers.