[school-discuss] K12EdCom.org Announcement

[Paul Nelson <pnelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Folks,

For those of you who will only look at the first line... 
http://k12edcom.org  ;-)

For some time on the K12OSN list members have been talking about the 
need for a second listserv that was more focused on using free and open 
content software/curriculum. We have created a new list that we hope 
will meet your needs. Read on...

The original K12OSN list is a great list for technical discussions about 
hardware and software configuration and we expect it to continue as a 
valuable resource for users of open source software in schools. The 
truth is that Linux works very well in schools and we now have a large 
number of non-technical education folk who are using it every day to 
teach. So, we created a new list for USERS of open source software in 
schools, but we're going one step farther. Read on...

There is a growing movement around the world to make information and 
educational materials freely available on the Internet. A quick search 
of the term "opencourseware" on google.com turns up a bunch of links 
that look promising but they are all directed at college/university 
level learners.

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
http://ocw.usu.edu
http://cnx.rice.edu

One other interesting project is http://en.wikibooks.org - in fact, 
there are several interesting wiki projects.  http://ibiblio.org/ is 
another great example of freely available information.

Our goal is to develop an educational commons of curriculum and learning 
resources that is freely available, published under the Creative Commons 
license. We're calling it K12EdCom.org. The web site is up and running 
(barely...) at http://k12edcom.org.

You can join the k12edcom list and I expect/hope that it will become a 
place where users of free software and free curriculum can share their 
ideas and get help and encouragement. We decided to host the web site 
using Drupal (http://drupal.org) so that we could let it evolve into 
other areas including publishing and linking to educational materials. 
There are also forums and blogging tools available to registered users.

Registering on the web site is not the same as joining the listserv. You 
will find a link to the listerv and archives on the site though.

There are two roles for registered site users: simple users and authors. 
I hope to attract educators interested in authoring curriculum, 
articles, blogs and stories on the web site. If you are interested in 
being an author, sign up on http://k12edcom.org and send me an email and 
I'll promote you right away.

I have a long list of articles that need writing and it would be great 
to generate content for the site right away. One of the first stories we 
need to do is something on all the other similar projects out there. We 
also need to build up the links section. I'll be working on that this 
weekend.

This is just a first step towards what I think we can become. There are 
a lot of ways to spend your time. Creating learning materials for kids 
all over the world is good one. I want to offer a special invitation to 
all you teachers out there with your favorite units of instruction, 
carefully developed over the years. Here's your chance to publish your 
work in a supportive community and watch it grow.

I hope you'll join us and participate.

;-) Paul
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Paul Nelson - Make things better.
http://pnelson.us