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[school-discuss] Proposal for Schoolforge

Dear Schoolforgers,

What do you think of the idea of encouraging the formation of local Schoolforge
groups within and-or in addition to such groups as LUGS and application
development projects?

Here is an idea. I have voiced it in other forms before, but think this may be
more like the first step than what I've said earlier. 

I'll paste in the text which I think could be a draft of a Schoolforge Press
Release. I would like to propose this or something similar as a Schoolforge-wide
endeavor.

Here's the link: 

http://opensourceschools.org/staticpages/index.php?page=20030303060148945

 and here's the text:

Possible Title? 
***
Schoolforge Encourages formation of local "chapters" around the world
***

*What is Schoolforge?

Schoolforge is an umbrella organization for organizations working on some aspect
of fostering free and open source software and other educational resources for
schools. Read about Schoolforge on the main site.

*Progress 

Now Schoolforge now has nearly 200 members. This growth is part of the growing
interest in Free and Open Source Software around the world and Schoolforge would
like to take the next step in fostering that growth. To that end toward  would
like to

*Goals

a.) call attention to specific positive projects worth supporting and
b.) to help people organize local groups that take advantage of our members'
global reach and expert knowledge to further our common goals in their communities.

*Reasons to Form Local Schoolforge Groups

There are four kinds of efforts for which we suggest that local Schoolforge
Groups be formed:

   1. maintaining, translating, writing and-or updating documents for the
educational community's members
   2. maintaining, creating, translating and updating FLOSS/EDU software
   3. maintaining, creating translating and updating FLOSC (content)/EDU 
   4. introducing people in education and software development to all of the
above and to each other.

Whether you are interested in all or one of the above tasks, we would welcome
your interest in forming a local Schoolforge group.

    * We hope that Local Linux User Groups which share the goals of Schoolforge
will join Schoolforge as a way of acting on those goals.
    * Other FLOSS-oriented groups which share the goals of Schoolforge are also
encouraged to join.
    * We also invite groups fostering non-software educational resources to join.
    * Schools and other organizations directly involved in education are invited
to form Schoolforge groups 

*What should your Local Schoolforge Group be called?
[Schoolforge + Your Community's Name]

*How can you get started?
We suggest that you

   1. announce your intention and ask for responses from others who are
interested on a LUG or related open source mailing list used by people in your
area, and
   2. also send to your local educational mailing lists, and
   3. begin corresponding by e-mail with those who respond about 
          * common goals (think broadly at first)
          * possible meeting place(s)
          * possible meeting time(s)
          * possible meeting method(s) (For example, Schoolforge recently began
chat meetings)

*Why form a Schoolforge group rather than a LUG?

    * If Linux or BSD or some other software is your only, or at least your
primary interest, then join or form a LUG (also: http://lugww.counter.li.org/)
or an application project. These are excellent purposes.
    * If educational software and-or content are so important to you that they
actually equal or surpass software in importance, then form a Schoolforge group.
Until now, education has come second; we would like to maintain the tie with
expert computing developers, but put the goal of education first, not second.

*What should a Schoolforge Group do?

Once you have formed a group, then we suggest that you do all of the following:

    * build a Web site which might or might not be hosted by an existing
Schoolfoge member organization, 
    * join Schoolforge (http://schoolforge.net/membership.php) and 
    * post news of your progress (or lack of it with details) on
http://news.schoolforge.net.

*What else can a Schoolforge Group do?
Consider

    * organizing and-or hosting one or more workshops for system administrators,
programmers, tech coordinators, teachers, students and-or parents
    * organizing and-or hosting one or more conferences in which people from all
or some of the above present to each other

*Resources for your efforts:

    * Schoolforge.net (Schoolforge Main)
    * news.schoolforge.net (Schoolforge News and Journal)
    * Schoolforge Membership List (http://schoolforge.net/members1.php)
    * Schoolforge-discuss Mailing List (http://schoolforge.net/sfdiscuss.php -
open to individuals as well as group reps.)
    * Joining Schoolforge (http://schoolforge.net/membership.php)
    * SEUL/EDU Directory Educational Applications (http://richtech.ca/seul/)
    * OFSET's educational CD-ROM
    * KNOPPIX Linux Distribution on CD-ROM
    * LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project)
    * k12os.org


*Conferences and Workshops

Linux in Education, Grand Prairie, Texas, USA
Contact Marilyn Hagle
http://opensourceschools.org/calendar_event.php?mode=&eid=200304041433248

Proposed Schoolforge-Thailand

June 23-27, 2003, Bangkok, Thailand

Best wishes,

David
-- 
http://www.iteachnet.org
http://members.iteachnet.org/webzine *
http://opensourceschools.org *
http://www.rose-marie.ac.th *


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