This example is made up. But in just a few months it will be part of the pupils' everyday lives in the primary school of Vedsted Centralskole located in the municipality of Aabybro – thanks to the project creating the ABDD Portal. Also the schools of Aabybro Skole and the Hjørring Ny 10. are among the pioneers.
- ABDD is short for Activities, Children, Democracy and Dialogue (Aktiviteter, Børn, Demokrati og Dialog), and the idea behind the project is to gather all the activities attended by children in one Portal, explains Michael Schelde, project manager of Dafolo A/S in Frederikshavn.
Dafolo is making this project reality in collaboration with the municipalities of Aabybro and Hjørring. And the idea is not just to let the pupils benefit from the Portal. It is just as much an instrument to enable a dialog in the local community – between pupils and the pupils' council, between parents and teachers, between parents and the school board – and for example between the school and the enterprises of the local community.
- For it's a fact that today's parents are heavily involved in their kids – drive them to school and the like. But part of the af dialogue is lost when we are dealing with the general lines. This becomes obvious at the parent-teacher meetings at the school: When dealing with the individual pupil, ”my child”, the parents show involvement, while meetings concerning the class or the school are having difficulties in attracting the parents. By moving the dialogue to the home and offering the parents an opportunity to communicate with the class teacher or the school board via the Portal, active participation in the democratic process of the school becomes less confusing. This also goes for the relation between pupils and the school board and the pupils' council – it is a way of learning democracy, points out Michael Schelde.

Contact to Enterprises
The vast majority of today's schools have their own homepage – and several of these schools are involved in experimental distance education and virtual learning rooms. However, when the ABDD Portal applied for grants from the Digital North Denmark, nobody had been dealing seriously with actual school portals.
- Since then a lot has happened in this field, but our project is still unique in combining technology, end-users and community in a novel way, emphasizes Michael Schelde, seconded by Henriette Corvinius Andersen, information officer on the project:
- We have been asked several times if they could not just create a homepage, just like the one they had previously. Still, this does not offer the opportunities for a dialogue as does a portal.
In relation to the school of the Hjørring Ny 10. it has been particularly vital to make use of the Portal in creating a dialogue between the school and a number of enterprises within the local area. This has already proved successful, and the pupils will be able to e.g. work on projects involving the enterprises – and once schooling is completed, contact may have been made for the young people to apply for a job or an apprenticeship with the enterprises.
Shortly before the Summer Holidays Dafolo Webhouse presented their proposal of the Portal, and on this occasion pupils as well as teachers made their contribution of comments and suggestions for changes. These have been taken to notice, and the portal will be opened along with the re-opening of the schools in August. From there on it is up to the pupils and the teachers to work with - and extend – the Portal.

Trials in Several Phases
While the Municipality of Hjørring has designated the Hjørring Ny 10. klasse as the only experimental class in relation to the ABDD Portal, it is the aim is to involve all public schools of the municipality of Aabybro in the experiment. For now only the Vedsted Centralskole and five selected classes of the Aabybro Skole are testing the Portal and contributing with comments and suggestions.
- Making a portal to be used by the youngest schoolchildren - and by the school board, town councillors etc. is quite a challenge. Therefore it is important for us to listen, in particular to the everyday users and ask for their advice – and to carry out these user tests enabling the pupils to comment on the proposals, we are coming up with , explains Henriette Corvinius Andersen.

Personal Log Diary
On the Portal every pupil has a private profile. Here they run an electronic logbook, a kind of diary – and they can sign off those who should be able to view their writings: The teachers, the parents, the fellow pupils, or the careers teacher. For the sixth grade pupils it is mandatory to create an educational log – and obviously this will be kept on the portal under the pupil's personal profile. There is a homework log where the teacher can upload tasks, exercises an assignments – for individual pupils, a group, or for the entire class. This way the Portal can be used for the differentiation of teaching. And of course the pupils can return their work to the teacher via the portal.
There is also a contact book for the parents.
- However, the Portal also offers a quite different option, - that of measuring soft values. The school is able to upload questionnaires for the pupils to fill out – for example regarding their well-being and any occuring issues like mobbing – and this should be instrumental in monitoring the social conditions of each class. This also enables the school to estimate itself by values other than average marks, and this part of the project has attracted a great deal of interest on my school visits to present the ABDD Portal nationwide, reports Michael Schelde.