[school-discuss] Linux in Education Book?

[David Bucknell <david@members.iteachnet.org>]

Dear All,

This message is a proposal for a community-created online, open content licensed
book about free/libre/open source in education. Please feel free to forward this
message to relevant lists. It is an idea many of us have been thinking of for a
long time and Bill Kibler's message inspired me to try to get it rolling. I'm a
teacher and it's summer and I'm ready to start. Here goes:

I would like to turn this book idea around and make it both doable and give it
some strength it wouldn't have if just one of us did it. I've personally been
working on one (Open Source Schools was the working title at one point) for a
couple of years. Actually quite far along at one point, but things change fast.
I would like to pool interested efforts for two things: an online, ongoing
project, perhaps as part of Schoolforge.org (I would host it on the same serverr
as opensourceschools) and also as part of Open Book at ibiblio -- if they would
agree.

The committee would decide on the container software and format (hopefully
quickly). I would suggest Plone or Geeklog, but we could go with straight html.
Nothing fancy.

Graphics and multimedia folks would be welcomed participants.

Bill, you may just be the one to do it on your own, and if so, more power to
you. The rest of us are too busy to do the whole thing and, as I said, I think
we could give different things to the project.  In many ways, the parts of a
good book already exist on the net in various places (and people). 

My idea is that we each contribute to an online (open content licensed) version.
Anything after that, such as a printed book, is gravy.  We need a time-line, a
site, an editorial committee and, most importantly, contributors.

I volunteer myself and any writers among us to join in the project as members of
the editorial team. 
At the risk of upsetting those mentioned or not mentioned, but in the interest
of getting the ball rolling, I'd like to mention a few possible names: I'd start
the list with Doug Loss, Mike Eshmann, Daniel Carter, Hilaire and Bruno,
Frederick Noronha, Paul Nelson, Jeff Elkner, David Trask and any others willing.
Note, like any other open source project, the proof is in the work produced. I
volunteer to be overall coordinator/edior. If someone is more qualified in a
certain area than I am, I will readily defer. The writers of the original
opensourceschools.org would be fantastic contributors. Meanwhile, there are
many, many other folks who haven't spoken up yet and have something to offer. A
few of them would, I'm sure, like to contribute in some way. 

 I'm ready with the site and the mailing list for any willing.This team would
write, but also recruit, work with hard-core topic writers. Some are both. For
example, Matt and Paul might do it all, but I would willingly work with Teemu or
Myles on an intro for Mimerdesk and Schoolmation. Many of the app authors have
already written fantastic docs to which we would only need to add an
introduction with a link to their work. Hopefully, authors themselves will write
their intros. They are probably too busy with their existing projects to join
this one except to write their intros to their products.


If we did it right, this could be the first group and another could do the
revised edition next year. I'd say that in 3 years, the situation will have
changed sufficiently to merit a new approach.

If you've read "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution,"
(http://www.openresources.com/documents/open-sources/main.html) you'll see what
I'm thinking of -- at least for the first part, which would be the argument for
free/libre/open source in education -- and, of course, not just for software.

PART I:

*Why free/libre/open source software?
*Why free/open content?
*What's happening in education?
*From the student's viewpoint

First, I'd like to see Schoolforge coordinate this task because I'd like to see it 

*draw internationally on those, and I count myself among them, who have spent
considerable amounts of time promoting the idea with bosses and community members;
*be done with internationalization in mind

I thought that we might divide up the work along the following lines:

PART II:
Meeting Schools' Needs:
Tools and how-to's

*OS Linux and BSD
People like Matt are heavy hitting-enough to do their own distros: Blue Linux
should have a strong part in it. So should Freeduc and the in-progress Seul ISO
project. k12ltspk120s.org is/are another important part, along with alternatives
to it.

*Connecting to the World: Server side infrastructure:
Router:
*Nat and Firewall:
*Proxy and Filtering:
*DNS

Web and Mail:
*Apache, mysql, php
*SMTP
*Zope


File Sharing:
*Samba
*NFS
*Mac Netalk
*NIS
*LDAP

Web Apps:

Portal/Site Builders (The nuke, slash, postnuke, Metadot, Plone road show)
intranets: (I'd like to see chapters by the makers of Mimerdesk, Schoolmation
and others)
Course builders: (Manhattan, FLE, Moodle, etc.)
Student database: Report Cards and Transcripts (Les Richardson's OAfS:
http://richtech.ca and others interested)
Help-Desk (Help ICT looks very good)
Scheduler (Lots of promise on recent schoolforge-discuss discussions: is this
happening?)
School Library (see below)
Budgeting and Purchasing (Don't know)

Calendars, To-do lists, contacts, etc. (shared and private -usually w/
mail)(Ximian?)

Separate tools:
Bulletin boards
wiki's


PART III:
Open Content

"Technology Integration"

WebQuests and/or "Course Readers"
This is the real on-line curriculum resource to which we should link and for
which we should give space for new ones and for agglomeration (is that a word?).
If any of you coders want an eye-opener, check out Bernie Dodge's site:
http://webquest.sdsu.edu/matrix.html

The School Library:
koha and friends

The Solar System: An example of what can happen when free and open source ideas
meet education.

PART IV:
Multimedia: the intersection of content and software
Desktop:
graphics
k edutainment 
All the great apps involved such as GCompris, DrGenius, KStars, TuxPaint,
KTouch, All the science apps. I hope we can get the authors and others involved
in these projects to write their own intros and point us to guides and other
relevant work.
What's on k-12ltsp, version 3 is an incredibly great start. Same with
Freeduc.Seul's ISO will kick in here, too.

PART V:
Case Studies (Could link to and augment existing case-studies on SEUL/edu,
Freeduc and other places.)

PART VI:
Getting involved
Joining an existing project
Starting your own Schoolforge group


What do you think? I'd like to do this. If you would,too, please speak up.

Thank you.

David


I have divided the text up into these parts for which we could form a group of
contributors:Quoting Matt Jezorek <matt@bluelinux.org>:

> I to had been thinking along these lines. If you want to chat sometime look
> me up and I will be more then happy to exchange ideas with you.
> 
> Matt Jezorek
> Linux for Education
> http://www.bluelinux.org/
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Worden, Bill" <wworden@ivytech.edu>
> To: <seul-edu@seul.org>
> Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 1:40 PM
> Subject: RE: [seul-edu] Re: Linux in Education Book?
> 
> 
> > Linux offers a lot to education.  It's derived from a collaborative
> effort
> > which is motivated by the joy of learning.  It is the ONLY major OS
> > completely open for computer education.  It provides a low-cost
> alternative
> > to educational institutions both in software and hardware costs.  As for
> the
> > book side, you should probably check out Yahoo! Groups : linux-ed or
> Yahoo!
> > Groups : linux-ta.  That might help.  I'm interested in hearing any
> updates
> > on this.  I'm pursuing getting a Linux cert here and one of the first
> steps
> > is convincing the administration :-(
> >
> >  -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-seul-edu@seul.org [mailto:owner-seul-edu@seul.org]  On Behalf
> > Of Bill Kibler
> > Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 3:07 PM
> > To: seul-edu@seul.org
> > Subject: [seul-edu] Re: Linux in Education Book?
> >
> > Trying to find out if there is any Book that covers
> > Linux in/for Education???
> >
> > Considering writing one - have degree, skill, knowledge.
> > Taking suggestions, thoughts, concerns before I start.
> >
> > Bill.
> >
> 
> 


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