Zebu was educational groupware from MC² Learning Systems Inc. in Burnaby, BC — a
server-based tool that let students and teachers build collaborative online projects
together, entirely from a web browser. Its tagline said it plainly: turn your computer
network into a learning environment.

This was 1998. Zebu ran as CGI alongside an HTTP server, on an intranet or out on the
open Internet, and the client was Netscape Navigator with Java. The authoring interface
was delivered as Java applets in the browser — the editing and object-attribute windows
students worked in were applet windows, not HTML forms. Students logged in, worked inside
the familiar browser window, and saw their project update automatically — no HTML, no
FTP, no server administration. Projects stayed private behind a password until someone
decided to publish them to the web, which was a single checkbox.

Documents

• Zebu! flyer (1998) — two-page product
  flyer, with screenshots and server requirements.
• Zebu! brochure (1999) — the full
  brochure: feature walkthrough, technical information, and quotes from Houston ISD,
  Kent School District, Region 10 ESC, and the Toronto District School Board.
• Zebu! reprint from MultiMedia Schools
  — Bonnie Jackson’s article, reprinted from the September/October 1999 issue.

How it worked

A Zebu project was assembled from a handful of pieces:

• Templates — the teacher’s framework for an activity, closer to a lesson plan than
  a layout. Templates carried the project instructions and the questions students had to
  answer, and could lock down as much or as little structure as the teacher wanted.
• Pages — the substance of the project. Students edited them through simple applet
  dialogs, mixing text, graphics, video, sound, web links, discussion areas, and raw HTML
  if they wanted to get fancy.
• Reference Collections — shared bibliographies and link lists scoped to a project,
  importable straight from a bookmark file.
• Galleries — stores of video, audio, and graphics files that students could pull
  into their pages.
• Discussion areas — embedded in pages, so students could critique and respond to
  each other’s work asynchronously, and teachers could leave feedback in place.
• Administration Tools — user, project, and privilege management for the whole
  password-protected environment.

Technical details

Zebu was server-based and spoke to the web server over CGI. Minimum server requirements
were Windows NT 4.0 on a Pentium with 32 MB of RAM, Mac OS on a PowerPC with 32 MB of RAM,
or any UNIX with HTTP server software. On the client side: Netscape Navigator 3.01 or
greater, or Internet Explorer 4.01, on Windows 95; Navigator 4.02 or greater on Macintosh
PowerPC. Intranet deployments needed TCP/IP and an HTTP server on the network.

Those version numbers were about Java, not HTML — the browser’s JVM had to run the
applets. Which is also why the brochure’s fine print rules out Navigator 4.0 and 4.01
specifically.

In the classroom

MultiMedia Schools ran a first-hand account in its September/October 1999 issue —
“Flex Your Classroom’s Collaborative Muscles,” by Bonnie Jackson, a grade seven teacher at
Langley Meadows Community School in Langley, BC. Her class used Zebu for a poetry
anthology, an annual Planet Study built from the BC curriculum outcomes, an ancient
civilizations unit, and ecosystem pages prepared before an overnight stay at the Vancouver
aquarium — then revised afterward, with aquarium staff logging in to comment. Her students
also paired with a class in Fort Lauderdale on an endangered species project.

What she kept coming back to was the peer dynamic: students cared far more about what
their classmates thought of a page than what she did, and the software receded far enough
into the background that everyone could think about the work instead of the tool.