[school-discuss] SchoolForge Education Software section now live!

[Justin <jriddiough@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm excited to announce that the Education Software section has been 
released, and can be found at http://www.schoolforge.net/education-software

A couple thanks, first would be to Richard Houston, who has populated 
almost all of the listings based off of the WinOSS CDRom project.  He 
has also made several suggestions which have greatly improved the 
quality of the presentation.  The second thanks goes to Les Richardson - 
who developed the original application index for FLOSS software. 

Some notes: 
1) I think this is a great place to have FLOSS software listed - and I 
hope that this is an exceptionally user friendly experience. 
2) While these things tend to change over time, SchoolForge is ranking 
very high in Yahoo searches for "Education Software" and "Education case 
studies" - which means that projects listed may be some of the first 
that people see when starting to research software solutions.  Google 
rankings have been going up, we do very well in terms that include "open 
source" or "free software", but I'm trying to target a broader audience 
that may simply be looking for software solutions rather than something 
that is specifically Free Software.  
3) Any links, announcements, blogs that can point to these resources 
would reinforce the high rankings, providing more awareness to all projects
4) If anyone knows of any funding opportunities for development - I'm 
all ears!  I have a ton more ideas that I'd like to add into this, I'd 
say that what is here is about 25% of what it could be.  For example, I 
like the idea of allowing users to create amberjack tours for various 
projects.. the different categories should have descriptive 
headers..lots of things!
5) The interface to add/edit software works, but isn't ready for mass 
consumption
6) I personally like the way that distributions/live cds/collections 
have been set up, I think that having these listed under compilations 
will help take some of the confusion out of that a distro is vs linux, 
etc. 

I'm certain that this will significantly increase how many people are 
visiting SchoolForge, and how they are utilizing it.  I'm looking at 
ways that this interest can be channeled into bringing people into the 
discussion, and along the lines of Chris's suggestion that there is some 
way to recognize support organizations that have implemented these 
solutions.

I hope this brings about some ideas, comments, suggestions, bugs.. 
anything.  And again, a lot of credit goes to Rich Houston for sharing 
the work he has put into building a collection of software that is 
mostly multi-platform. 

Justin