[school-discuss] SchoolForge direction

[Justin Riddiough <jriddiough@xxxxxxxxx>]

 On 10/12/2010 02:18 PM, Daniel Howard wrote:
>  Pardon the top post for quick summary: Thanks Mike for an awesomely 
> detailed response, I've already learned a lot and plan to learn more 
> on 2nd and 3rd read of this...
>
> Justin, any thoughts about updating our tables of recommended 
> configurations using all the excellent info below and in other recent 
> posts on this thread?  Daniel

Daniel & all -

Unfortunately I haven't had a lot of time to stay on top of the website 
for awhile, and I feel like it's starting to hold things back.  It's 
probably time to move the SchoolForge website off of my plate and to 
find leadership that can take things to the next level.  The community 
has been very inspiring and I have unmeasurable regard for both the 
community and the ideals (however loosely applied) provided in the 
SchoolForge operating procedures.  
http://www.schoolforge.net/operating-procedures

It was studying the procedures intensely, and understanding what the 
goal was that lead to designing the site the way it was.  I also just 
worked with the resources that were available and tried to centralize 
and update (Les Richardson's case studies, software index..)  I would 
say that SchoolForge.net is probably one of the most visible and best 
positioned websites in the sphere of Education software - according to 
Google.  Searches for 'education software', 'open source education', 
'education case studies' regularly bring in many new visitors to our 
website and I'm happy to say that a lot of those visitors end up reading 
about the software projects.  SchoolForge.net, in the last 30 days 
(according to google analytics,) has had 18,530 visits and over 60,000 
pageviews.

That is really incredible, and if you figure each user spends 3 minutes 
plus in their visit, thats a lot of time spent showing users how FLOSS 
can fit their needs!!  So I propose that SchoolForge.net is positioned 
to be the education software industry, and we should evaluate how to 
move forward as a community.   I'm actively exploring avenues that may 
be brought to the community for discussion as well.  If one of these 
avenues seems likely, you'll hear more.

I'd invite the community to share efforts & updates with their 
individual projects and where they are participating.  The diversity of 
efforts members are working on is pretty great actually.  I identified 
the software developers & projects as the stakeholders, but think that 
certainly (and unfortunately) does not reflect a big part of this 
community.

Thanks,

Justin