Re: [schoolforge] Thank you and agenda items

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

David Bucknell wrote:

> Obviously, one unfortunate thing is that schoolforge was not picked up by
> slashdot but that's a lesson for us.

Well, I didn't really expect slashdot to pick it up.  My experience has been that
if something isn't to the specific interest of one of the "owners" of slashdot it
never gets on the page.  I've come to realize that slashdot is essentially a
great big personal website rather than a news and information site.

> Despite lots of planning, we managed to overlook
> the fact that most of these news sites/orgs/papers do not take press
> releases, but articles based on them. So, I think we might do well to try
> for a press release a month announcing collective/individual achievements
> and attempt to get articles written about those achievements. That way,
> schoolforge itself wll garner weight as having begun to fulfill its
> ambitions of fostering a cohesive and more
> effective common effort for free and open "resources" in education.
>

That's probably true.  But we didn't have anything much to base an article on
other than the creation of the coalition.  I think that if we use Schoolforge as
a common entity for releasing such information about our various organizations we
may be able to build some recognition and expectation in the media about what
we're doing.  For example, here in the US very few people have heard that the
Greek government has put Linux labs in every high school in the country (Mr.
Karounos, am I correct in that?).  I think a well-written press release/article
about that decision, its implementation, and how things are working out would
have a very good chance of being picked up by the mainstream press.  If we work
at it, we can probably all come up with something of interest to the general
public.

>
> By the way, where is the media contact list again? I may be duplicating. I
> finally got EDTECH to post the announcment today and have sent to Edpage,
> Benton Foundation, a bunch of edtech Webzines and the NYTimes (three
> different editors in hopes one of them would find it interesting -- no
> contact on their Web site for either education or technology).
>

<http://seuldat.seul.org/cgi-bin/media/medview.pl>  It is password protected.
Before posting the userid and password here I'd like to here from others if
that's a good idea or not.

>
> Re this mailing list: any hopes of aliasing it to the schoolforge.net
> domain?
>

That's already done.  schoolforge-core@schoolforge.net is the primary list
address, although schoolforge-core@seul.org also works (since SEUL is hosting the
list).

>
> What about having a schoolforge list that isn't restricted to member reps?
>

I think that's a good idea.  I'd like to move some (perhaps all) mailing list
traffic from the seul-edu list to such a general schoolforge list.  At SEUL/edu
we try to run a general mailing list for everyone, but because we're one among
many projects I think there may be some who feel that we compete with, rather
than complement, them and therefore set up their own mailing lists.  Having many
similar mailing lists mitigates the usefulness of all of them because the
discussions tend to be among small groups of people rather than among wider
communities.

> *We should ask of our members to make sure they've got one of the and the
> link on their Web sites.
>

I think you mean the Schoolforge member graphics, right?  We can use Matt
Jezorek's graphics (Matt, could you post links to those?) or the ones Felipe
designed to tie in with his puzzle logo on the Schoolforge frontpage (Felipe,
could you post links to _those_?).  We should also think about that frontpage
logo.  Felipe has done excellent work setting things up, including designing the
initial graphics.  We have always talked about having a logo design contest for
Schoolforge though, both as a way to get the best graphics we can and as a way to
increase public awareness in who we are and what we're doing.  Do we want to run
such a contest?  If so, how should we go about it?

> *I know it should wait until there are more content revisions, but I was
> so impressed by the power of the multilingual press releases, that I hope
> we will soon
> have the site in multiple languages. Of course, down the road, this could
> mean considering mirror sites.
>

As Felipe said, it may be difficult to keep these in sync.  It's worth
investigating, though.

>
> As for our tasks, I propose, in addition to a monthly press release, the
> following "agenda" items:
>
> *Should this discussion be taking place on the seul-edu list instead,
> except for voting?
>

No.  In my opinion, seul-edu was used for the initial discussions about setting
Schoolforge up because it already had a large number of members from other groups
subscribed to it.  Now that Schoolforge is operational, discussions about
maintaining it are properly done on this list.  Although mailing list membership
is currently just those people designated as representatives of their groups and
a few other people who are maintaining the website and databases, the archives of
schoolforge-core discussions are available and readable to anyone who wants to do
so.  Roger Dingledine also has mentioned the possibility of allowing anyone to
subscribe to this mailing list, but only allowing the designated representatives
to post to it.  That's a possibility worth discussing.

>
> *PR: I hope we will work toward a common pr package that members and
> supporters
> can take with them to conferences. If of interest, then I suggest that we
> discuss what this might consist of exactly.
>

I think this could be a very useful idea.  In addition, I'd like to see a set of
documents and whatever other material seems useful created for the use of Linux
user groups and other community organizations that want to try to get open
resources used in their local schools.  If we can provide some sort of open
resources in schools advocacy and support training, we may be successful beyond
what we currently expect.

>
> Extras for down the road:
>
> *Software project hosting
> You may remember my fixation on the sourceforge.net software. I think we
> are missing an opportunity by not moving all hosting of educational apps
> to schoolforge. It's what people expect.
>

Currently, SEUL is doing this on a case by case basis.  One of the problems with
Sourceforge is that while there are very many projects hosted there, but great
majority of them are just ideas of one or two people that never amount to
anything.  For our credibility I think it's necessary that we be selective on
what we host.

I'm not sure if I like the idea of Schoolforge hosting projects or not.  As you
say, it's what people probably expect from the name.  However, once Schoolforge
starts to host any native content, we inevitably set up a two-tiered
organization.  On one hand you have member groups and what they do, and on the
other hand you have Schoolforge-hosted projects.  I think it would be unavoidable
for such a thing to occur.  I'd prefer to keep project hosting to one or more of
the Schoolforge member groups, such as SEUL, KDE Edutainment, etc.  That way,
Schoolforge stays as a hub connecting the actual content providers rather than
becoming one itself.

>
> *Curriculum/course project hosting
> Likewise, you may remember my complaints and then submission to the wiki
> as a course/curriculum building instrument. I do think that wiki (which
> won't work from behind most MS-enabled-disabled firewalls because they
> strangely disable 8080 ports as well as ssl) is useful, and it may be the
> way, but I'm still stuck on setting up a matrix of common school format
> and then asking people to set up projects to build opencontent parts, such
> as geometry 1 for average high/secondary level students, or English for
> 7th graders/year 8's/13 year olds. In fact, I'm building it now. If you're
> interested, let me know.

Again, I think this is best done by one or more member projects.

--
Doug Loss                 All I want is a warm bed
Data Network Coordinator  and a kind word and
Bloomsburg University     unlimited power.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Ashleigh Brilliant