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Re: [school-discuss] Nashuatelegraph.com: Forget the apple; surprise teacher with open-source software



> Sobering thoughts Matt.  I propose that as we consider how to reinvent 
> the SchoolForge web site, and add teacher specific resources, we not 
> forget the school IT department.  Links to TCO studies, and we add a 
> list of consultants who can help school IT departments reinvent 
> themselves.  Steve Hargadon (CA), Jim Kinney (GA) come to mind 
> immediately (Jim is helping the Atlanta Public Schools system move to 
> Linux) and I bet a bunch of others are out there.  If SchoolForge is 
> about helping schools move to OSS, this is clearly a component of it. 
> Thoughts?

Several months ago I was pondering the state of FOSS support for
schools, and decided that Someone should create a consortium, or
something, and it should have a web presence, or something. Well,
thankfully both Bryant Patten and Steve Hargadon have been working on
this since that time. While we were at NELS, Bryant Patten, Dave
Trask, maddog, Chris Johnson, Bill Sconce, and I all had a discussion
about how to go about this most beneficially.

We tentatively decided that a formal organization (requiring dues)
would be beneficial, but I haven't heard more about this yet.

I believe Steve Hargadon has already been working on a resource to
list FOSS consultancies in the U.S. This must not be that list, but
I just added myself to the k12opensource.com wiki's (very short) list.
http://k12opensource.wikispaces.com/Consultants

If that isn't what we're supposed to do, I'm sure Steve will tell us
soon. :)

There are many movements afoot, and the SchoolForge website, too,
should provide resources to help schools find training and support for
FOSS.

--matt

--
Open Source Software Engineering Consultant
http://majen.net/

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