[school-discuss] DSS for Teachers, Adminstrators....

["Gerard Lam" <gerard_lam10@hotmail.com>]

Leon,

You are correct in pointing out that I am using Hotmail, sorry bad habit ;)
(though I do not enjoy it at times - it is my alternative email address at
this moment and I will be free once I build my mail server).   I am not
Microsoft bashing because Microsoft has had it's contribution and has
touched all of our lives at one point or another - weather we know it or
not - directly or indirectly, so excuse me for using the Hotmail service, I
did not want to use my corporate mail account for this purpose.  Also,
without Microsoft the feed and drive for an alternative would have probably
paced at a slower level and not have permeated into mainstream culture at a
phenomenal speed.  I am not here to argue but would like to reinforce that
my point was -  I feel certifying kids with Microsoft at a young age should
not be part of the K-12 curriculum and does not prepare one for their future
and I hope school districts do not adopt that mentality...

As you can see Trinity college is working their way to get free of their
dependence on using Microsoft.  Like any change - it takes time.  This is
not about us versus them (MS) - but more about using the best tool to get
the job done - it is about, as that paper pointed out and rightfully
titled - Freedom to Education and Innovate.  It takes time to change a habit
and its hard to find a solution when one entity has been so dominating.  It'
s only a matter of time before there will be a substitute for PowerPoint for
those "locked" into it.  I believe Open Source will emerge as the answer in
the future because of the amazing contributions,  innovations, intelligence
and effort of everyday people who care.

Leon and Dave, I agree the standards offered by America's Choice(TM) for
School Design do seem commercial.  They do not seem to publicly advocate
specific software but do charge $70 to $105K for their services and offer
books....  They offer a boilerplate and services to schools to reform their
education process and align with the NCLB act.

So after having said this and knowing about the NCLB act and its goals (an
admirable one - thought it might not get the results they are planning)  How
can open source be more structured and utilized so IT can be used as an
solution and align with the NCLB? (of course this only applies to public
schools in the US -  but it can be a useful start for other countries; or
other counties might be able to offer us a better method)

Just a thought - We can obtain and compile a master database of each state's
curriculum standards (or link to another DB system)?  Then the next step
would be to have a system (some call it a curriculum manager) or program in
which it can match the right lesson plan (or content)  to fulfill the
specified requirements. Lesson plans (pulled form a pool of content) can
then be presented to the educator, which in turn can pick the one to fulfill
that requirement (or have it be done automatically)...  And at the end  -
the teacher would know if he or she checked off all the required elements
the state wants that school to meet - kind of like a decision support system
for teachers....maybe utilizing XML, MySQL, PHP, and Apache....anyone
interested  in helping start up a project of this sort?  Of course, time has
to be spent on gathering the functional requirements, process,  and many
other details...and more importantly is there already something like that
out there?

Regards,
Gerard

----- Original Message -----
From: Leon Brooks <leon@brooks.fdns.net>
To: <schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net>
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 8:51 PM
Subject: Re: [school-discuss] Microsoft Thwarting Free Thinking


> On Thursday 30 January 2003 07:33 am, Richard Wraith wrote:
> > The actual paper:
>
> >
http://trinity.unimelb.edu.au/publications/papers/OSS-InnovateandEducate.pdf
>
> > Open Source Software: Freedom to Educate and Innovate
>
> We saw some of this at educationaLinux 2003, and were impressed!
>
> Cheer; Leon
>