Re: [school-core] [Fwd: Re: Regular media contact]

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

David Bucknell wrote:

> That said, I think we should do some or all of the following:
>
> 1)Seul and Open Source Schools and a few other orgs are not local, but central
> by design -- meant to be clearing houses and gathering spots. I say we combine
> them as schoolforge. I would like to continue as rabble rouser/editor of the
> front page, and we've had this discussion before, but my thoughts keep coming
> back to the duplicated effort. I would like to invite anyone who's doing what
> opensourceschools.org is, free/opensource resources in ed journal/newszine to
> subsume under a new "front page" for schoolforge. I have more thoughts on the
> "how" of this if anyone's interested.

When we formed Schoolforge we were concerned that it be seen as a coalition of
equal partners and not as a renamed SEUL/edu or Open Source Schools, which is why
we kept those organizations separate.  Since the unveiling of Schoolforge in
January, we've (SEUL/edu) worked on moving general discussion on the use of open
resources in education from the seul-edu mailing list to the schoolforge-discuss
list and reserving the seul-edu list for topics specific to SEUL/edu, which are
mainly the maintenance of the educational applications index and the case studies,
and the development of the educational ISO (an image file of educational software
that can be used to burn a CD-ROM).  We haven't been completely successful in
getting all general discussion off seul-edu, but I think the separation is
becoming clearer as time goes on.

I don't have any problems with having our various clearing house organizations
subsumed into Schoolforge if that's what we want.  But I want to make sure that
whatever development projects (such as the ones I mentioned above for SEUL/edu)
they're doing continue or get absorbed by similar ones with other Schoolforge
members.

To that end, I'd be happy to put out the biweekly Linux in education reports under
the Schoolforge aegis rather than the SEUL/edu one.  We'd have to look into moving
them all together, but I doubt that would be very difficult.

I'd want to keep the application index, case studies, and ISO projects as SEUL/edu
ones, though, since they require management and programming efforts that I think
are best done outside of this mailing list or the schoolforge-discuss one.

>
> 2)I think we should either start a new org a la a (very) cheap version of the
> w3.org and ask the opensource ed foundation to ramp up to be the funding arm
> of schoolforge, or create a new npo/ngo. This could be done in a way that
> encourages the formation of local groups, perhaps as complements or sub-groups
> of LUGS world-wide. If we go the LUG sub-group way (as a strategy), there
> might be no need to form an official npo/ngo. That could wait until some
> university or large foundation is convinced to fund a serious effort. It looks
> like I'll be doing a doctorate Edtech at Nova-Southeastern (US/Florida),
> mostly via the Web. Maybe they could be convinced to "look good" by supporting
> an organization. Maybe MIT could (SEUL?)

This gets into something we've wanted to do at SEUL/edu for over a year, but
haven't had the resources to start.  We want to develop LUG support materials to
help LUGs approach and support their local schools about the applicability and
desirability of open resources in education.  This project may be better done by
Schoolforge as a whole than by SEUL/edu.  We'd need to contact as many LUGs as
possible and get them to designate an educational contact we can send things to.
We'd also need to develop advocacy documents and advocacy HOWTOs to help them make
favorable impressions on the school administrators.  These things aren't
fundamentally technical in nature, which is why I think they may be better done
through Schoolforge than SEUL/edu.

As to the npo, I'll leave that to people more knowledgeable/skillful than me at
that sort of thing.

>
> 3)Take William up on his offer but more as a writer and strategist than as a
> spokesman, although he will inevitably be that, too. But his job, as he
> himself, foresaw would more appropriately be to make each part of the
> coalition shine. For one thing, I would like to see him as co-editor of the
> new Schoolforge frontpage/journal/newszine. Anything too serious without a
> salary would obviously be unreasonable for William, so we have to make good
> use of his time. If we ever _did_ get financial support, maybe we would be
> able to pay him.

William, you can define your role here, I think.

>
> 4)Redouble efforts to reach an international audience and get someone to help
> Felipe organize a translator's group.

I think this is extremely important.  Could each of the Schoolforge member
organizations try to find at least one person willing and able to help Felipe on
this?  If your group is national/regional rather than internet-based, you would
clearly be better at translating Schoolforge material into your commonly-used
languages than the rest of us would be.

>
> 5)Plan one or more (international again) free/opensource in ed workshop(s)
> conferences. Again, balance local and international: we could probably
> centrally develop the workshops that could be locally delivered for free or
> for profit, as suits the needs/desires of the ones actually getting people to
> listen and learn.

This would take some major investment in time, effort, and money.  It's a good
idea, but I think it might be best to try to convince the management of some of
the existing educational technology workshops to add free/open source tracks to
their programs.  That way we could concentrate on the message rather than on the
management details (renting facilities, tables and chairs, etc.).  In addition, I
think these workshops are run in many countries, so the internationalism would be
built in.  We should probably look at developing a standardized presentation that
can be customized for local or regional differences, and that can be delivered by
people from any of our member organizations.  That way we could have a common
message going out, but delivered by local people familiar with the specific needs
of the schools in the area.

>
> 6)Continue the current efforts to develop a cd or two with good stuff on it.
> These could be touted at the workshops/conferences.

We're definitely continuing to work on that at SEUL/edu.  I encourage anyone on
this list to let your organization know about this and to consider having some of
your members help with it.  The web page for the project is at
<http://www.seul.org/edu/iso.html>.  We especially need help from teachers and
school administrators for Phases 1 and 2.  If anyone is interested in taking part
in this, have them join the seul-edu mailing list by filling out the small form at
<http://www.seul.org/edu/>.


--
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