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Re: [school-discuss] Putting all of our ideas together



On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:04:06 -0800 marilyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>How about a core meeting at NECC and teleconferencing/skype 
>options for everyone else?

I always enjoy hearing from Marilyn. She is a doer. She does not let
anything get in her way. And I appreciate the comments in this thread from
Joan, Lee, and all the others -- clearly this is a burning issue.

But what is the issue? Advocacy? Funding? Software? Curriculum?
Organization? Communication? Outreach? Microsoft?

I think all those things were touched upon in this thread. They are all
relevant and timely, but the one that stands out to me is advocacy. The
thing is, you cannot take on advocacy without dealing with at least some of
those other issues. To do advocacy right you need funding -- free as in
beer will only get you so far, especially in a world accustomed to paying
for everything. To get funding you have to have something, and what really
helps with that is having an active group of members -- that or a
super-star leader. OLPC serves as a good example.

The Open Slate Project may seem more futuristic and visionary than what you
have in mind, but please give us a look. Our community resources include:

    o web site (http://openslate.net/)

    o wiki (http://wiki.openslate.net)

    o mailing list
(https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/openslate-brainstorms)

    o forums (http://sourceforge.net/projects/openslate/forums)

I think getting together face-to-face is a great idea for those who can get
there. For the rest of us there is Marilyn's excellent suggestion of using
Skype. I have participated in some developer conference sessions in Skype
and find the amount of work that can get done, even live, is phenomenal. My
Skype ID is garydunn808, but mail me to set a time first. Call me and I
will hold the mic up to the open window so you can smell 80 degree weather.

Although the goals of Open Slate are still beyond our reach, we have begun
the process of taking smaller steps that lead towards our goal. You can
help us.

    o We want to use the wiki to begin gathering the material that will
become Chalk Dust, the curriculum part of Open Slate. Anyone who would like
to contribute can request an account; just drop me a line.

    o I have just upgraded my Fujitsu tablet PC with FreeBSD 8.0 and Ubuntu
9.10 to continue the task of developing the slate's pen interface. This
weekend I will update the OS section of the wiki to document the process.
In the meantime you can read about my previous exploits in the Operating
System section.

If you have not done so already, I encourage you to take a look at Squeak
and Cobalt. I envision making Squeak the Open Slate desktop. A lot needs to
happen before that is practical, and until then we will rely on Gnome for
its foundation. With Squeak, the user is not treated as a consumer. All of
the ingredients used to make applications are available. This drives people
who distrust students crazy, but I cannot imagine a better way to learn.
Cobalt takes Squeak into a 3D world. Still very much pre-alpha, the plan is
to link virtual spaces the way web sites are linked. You can play with the
current (very incomplete and buggy) version on Windows and I think OS X ...
I know for a fact it does not run on FreeBSD yet, but we are working on it.
I only wish we could out this in student's hands today!

http://www.squeak.org/

http://www.duke.edu/~julian/Cobalt/Home.html

Making inroads into the K-12 establishment is too big a topic to add to
this. All I will say here is that I have come to the conclusion that the
FOSS community will do better working with smaller private schools and
homeschoolers. The challenge is that these groups tend to be conservative,
to the point where they would rather teach needlepoint than video creation.
Even though it is a challenge, I still believe the odds are better than
with Big Education.

In closing I want to clarify that I do not feel that getting FOSS in the
schoolhouse door is the measure of success. We need to make FOSS an
inseparable part of the school experience, to include having students
participate in its creation and management. The more people who step up and
contribute their time to this end, the easier the task of getting some
funding, which in turn will promote advocacy. It builds in a circle and
keeps going around and around. You can help by joining us today.

-- 
Gary Dunn, Honolulu
osp@xxxxxxxxx
http://openslate.net/