| Here is my take: Regarding Resilient Communities and the degree or education debate: - I am somewhat put off by the snarky tone of the linked article. My paraphrase of his message - "Do you want to be a bureaucrat or be your own person and make a lot of money?" My knee jerk response is 'why is this either or - why not both a degree and life long education'. - This is a deep and emotional debate (involving life choices, monetary value and self perception) so emotions are high and it would be easy to get lost inside it. - Since the author also wrote a New York Times piece called "Open Source War", I would worry about confusing people (or as the author may say - channel/brand conflicts) So I would recommend we keep focussed on our own goals and if we are successful in our design and production efforts, it will be useful to many communities, including both Resilient and 'Non-Resilient' ones. Regarding the SchoolForge new project, here are some of my thoughts (tolerance requested for the opening pontification). I have been talking to people about Open Source for a several years mostly around the U.S. but also in other countries. Prior to my FOSS conversion, I was building closed, proprietary software products for main stream publishers. The products did well but I always felt mildly queasy about driving the Digital Divide. Then I had my FOSS epiphany - here was the solution! I got so excited I started both a for profit company (White Nitro) and a non profit (NCOSE) to help spread the word about this incredible solution. Like any proselytizing effort, I thought the only thing holding back this from universal adoption was that people didn't know about. Just go around telling everyone and all of K-12 will switch over to Open Source. {fast forward several years) Well - surprise - the world is a complex place. Steve Hargadon and I both spoke at OSCON last year and then had the afternoon to talk about our perception of the state of FOSS adoption (in K-12 U.S. schools). Good news: I believe Open Source is now known to the majority of tech people and school administrators as an option. It is increasingly rare to have someone say 'I have never heard of all this'. This was not the case when I started. Note this is some what true of teachers in the classroom but varies widely as does their knowledge of and exposure to technology in general. Bad news: Most people only think about Free software in terms of money - Free as in beer. They listened because it saved them money. They love it because it gives them access without a budget. When some teacher asks on a list serve 'Does anyone know of an Open Source product that does X ....' they mean 'How can I do X for no cost'. They are just as pleased with a web service that is no cost but closed and proprietary. Richard Stallman has said for years that the Free as in Beer part of FOSS is the least important because it will always be easy for non Free software to give away their software. People dismissed this idea years ago but with the rise of Google and web services, it is now happening. Steve and I have heard many, many times 'Oh yeah - Open Source is great but I don't need it anymore - we have Google Apps' or perhaps worse 'Oh yeah - we are all Open Source - Google Apps, Prezy, Facebook....'. So - what's my point? The true magic of Open Source for Education is not the amazing fact that this software is zero cost which allows its distribution to all students across the globe. The true magic of Open Source for Education is that Open Source shows the reality of international cooperation on a global scale on projects of substance. It is the model of cross-cultural, real-world, project-based learning that our education system is desperately seeking to inspire our students to gain the 21st century skills that are so important to future success. The true value of Open Source is the incredible *process* not the amazing *products*. And my big current worry is that if we don't get this message out quickly, our window of opportunity will close, everyone will use closed but free web services and our chance to see FOSS really transform education will vanish. So here are my two suggestions for projects we could pursue: 1) Create materials that help classroom teachers engage students in participating in and contributing to Open Source projects (literature, websites, project liaisons, etc) 2) Create materials that help classroom teachers expose students to the emerging Open Hardware and Open Data movements. These seem to be where Open Source software was 5 years ago. I think these will come to be as powerful as FOSS and yet most educators seem unaware of their potential in the class room. Thanks for your patience and attention. Bryant ********* On Jan 27, 2012, at 1:33 AM, David Bucknell wrote:
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