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Re: [school-discuss] my puzzle about OSS in education



Right. 

I admit I'm not much of a FOSS developer, but I've just finished my
Ed.M in Technology in Education. As part of our program, we had many
opportunities (with several different professors) to develop and
evaluate software (and other media) in a variety of settings,
including K-12 classrooms.

One access for FOSS developers may be to build partnerships with
educational teaching and training institutions. Developers might gain
from the educational expertise, and educators who are part of a
program often are willing to develop not-for-profit projects. So, in
addition to simply soliciting for feedback, it would be great for
educators and developers to build and evaluate together.

--dave

HGSE TIE '05

On 6/4/05, Phil Carinhas <pac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 03, 2005 at 10:13:22PM -0700, Bill Kendrick wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 03, 2005 at 11:10:47PM -0400, David Crusoe wrote:
> > > All,
> > >
> > This is no doubt why Tux Paint has been so successful, while Tux Math has
> > been stuck in a rut.  There are dozens of excuses I can think of as to why
> > I haven't "finished" Tux Math, and one of them is lack of feedback from
> > educators (this was so in the beginning; since then, teachers have actually
> > discovered the app and sent me email about it :^) )
> 
>   A few years ago I tried to start a project that would allow for peer
> review and feedback for OSS documentation; It never got off the ground,
> but the same "process" would be relevant to software. Its clear that
> to develop excellent teaching materials and software, you need an excellent
> process by which to evolve it. We never really got this process well
> defined, but as you can imaging, it looks like a feeback loop between
> the developers and teachers.
> 
>   As we all know, its a significant challenge to define, much less,
> implement such a process. You also need dedicated teachers willing to
> use their classes as testing grounds.
> 
> Although it may seem to be an extra overhead burdon to the development
> process, it's needed and important.
> 
>  -Phil
>  .--------------------------------------------------------.
>  | Philip A. Carinhas      | http://fortuitous.com        |
>  | Fortuitous Technologies | Linux Consulting & Training  |
>  `--------------------------------------------------------'
>