[school-discuss] Survey for Schoolforge site updates

[Paul McKimmy <paul.mckimmy@xxxxxxxxx>]

Aloha, Schoolforge members!

As Justin noted, I am working on developing a graduate course on Free/Open-Source Software in Education, which will be available at University of Hawaii-Manoa in August. As part of the course, students will submit reviews, case studies, and/or lesson plans to schoolforge.net as community contributions.

I've discussed some potential site updates with Justin Riddiough, David Bucknell, and Laura Michaels. My interest is in adding functionality that I feel would be useful for educators in identifying, selecting, and using F/OSS in education. I am fortunate to be working with a talented design team, the Distance Course Design & Consulting group (DCDC), at UHM. We are hoping to get your input on my suggestions, and collect your ideas on making schoolforge.net even more useful for educators.

If interested, please use this very short survey to provide input and/or new ideas. We have a tight time-line for DCDC's assistance, so we'll be reviewing results in one week. We hope to use your feedback, modify the mockups linked here, and release updates in August.

Also, if anyone is interested in taking the course, either for-credit or for fun, please provide your email address on the survey. Registered students earn credit at UHM, but I can add unregistered students (no credit) if they're willing to commit. Fully online participation is planned, though local students may join web conferences and speakers from on-site.

Thanks in advance,

Paul McKimmy

On 07/09/2013 09:24 AM, Justin Riddiough wrote:

Dear SchoolForgers,

Exciting news on the SchoolForge website front! Paul McKimmy contacted us in Mid June via the website with the following:

"Aloha - I am a university professor at U of Hawaii-Manoa, preparing a graduate course on F/OSS in Education as an online course. ÂOne of the assignments in the class will be to write a review of educational F/OSS applications that students have tried and tested in educational settings.

I have a talented web team available to me for the next 8-10 weeks. ÂWe are talking about building a similar site, but I wanted to contact the schoolforge team first to see if collaboration would make better sense. I am wondering about the possibility of building new features into schoolforge.net."

Since then, David Bucknell and Laura (LM) have discussed with Paul where we are at currently, as well as efforts and strategies we've worked on in the past.Â

Paul McKimmy brings a development team that has some availability over the next weeks to upgrade and bring some of the features that have been discussed. They are very eager to connect with the community and get the ball rolling! I believe they have some resources to share that show what they have in mind.

With that, I welcome Paul to introduce himself and share what is in the works!

Thanks,

Justin Riddiough