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Re: [school-discuss] Proposal for Schoolforge
Dear John,
MY 2 pence: What you are doing is great, but if each new group sets out to solve
the "whole problem" then we have two things, good and bad:
*more groups for people to choose from and
*more groups to choose from.
There are positives and negatives. I have come to think that there is no way
around this as every day someone sets up something new and if they are on our
side, we must welcome them.
I have offered the idea of the local schoolforge groups as a counter-balance to
this trend, not a cure-all. The good things about local schoolforge groups
include (but are not limited to ;-)):
* local autonomy
* global connections via Schoolforge.net and Schoolforge-discuss and
news.schoolforge.net
I hope that all schoolforge members and users will make use of all members'
resources. I know I decided to change opensourceschools.org to
news.schoolforge.net for the very reasons of which you speak. After all,
seul.org/edu has done a great deal and continues to do so, for all of us and I
prefer to support/join them rather than risk taking away from them (us!).
Seul.org/edu was actually quite magnanimous to join schoolforge.net as was
ofset. We're stronger because of them, obviously. I think the alternative is
further distructive competition which is, most will agree, not furthering our aims.
Meanwhile, do what you think you need to, but double check that it actually does
further the larger cause as well as your local aims. Only you can be the judge
of that.
Best wishes and good luck with linuxineducation.org.
David
Quoting Jonathan Hughes <declaretruth@yahoo.com>:
> Hey Everyone,
>
> I like David's idea of bringing together people that are all interested
> in working on advocating the use of Open Source software in education.
> What David has written up is a good place to start but I don't think it
> addresses a key issue right now in the Open Source for education
> community. This issue is how we can best support and share resources
> between local SchoolForge groups and SchoolForge members. I have taken a
> lot of my time browsing the web for websites that would be of interest
> to people considering to use Linux and Open Source software in
> education. Most of this browsing was to find links for the Linux In
> Education Portal (http://www.linuxineducation.org). What I found was
> that people were duplicating each others efforts and that it was so hard
> to find information. It would be a nightmare for an Administrator of a
> school or school district to try and find what they need to make a good
> decision.
>
> What I am looking at is having some way that people can share the
> resources that others have taken the time to produce. These resources
> include anything from lesson plans used to teach computer classes with
> Open Source tools to financial documents that detail how much money they
> have saved using Linux to writing up HOWTOs for common Linux and Open
> Source based computer setups. I would like people to know about the
> Linux In Education Portal because it is so good for people just starting
> out looking at using Linux and I am sure that other people have taken
> their time to produce some meaningful product that the Open Source in
> education community can use. How can we get this information out to
> people, how do we share information between SchoolForge groups? Isn't
> this one of the purposes of SchoolForge to be an organization that
> facilities the sharing of resources...what is SchoolForge doing to make
> this happen? Are we looking for new ideas?
>
> Regards :),
> Jonathan Hughes
>
> On Sun, 2003-04-06 at 20:43, David Bucknell wrote:
> > 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
> --
> Jonathan Hughes <declaretruth@yahoo.com>
> Message digitally signed for security. Signature.asc is the digital
> signature. Use PGP software to prove the authenticity of this message.
>
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