On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 9:39 AM, LM
<lmemsm@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 10:27 AM, David Bucknell
<david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This is an interesting idea. It may be that you are right; however,
as exciting as it would be to get the old engine fired up, before we
jump into that kind of role, and I am certainly for a more vital
group, let's look at our mission.
I think David's made some very good points. It's great to advocate certain projects, but if you're struggling with just trying to get a school district to accept open source software in the first place, other priorities come first.
It's a chicken-and-egg problem with respect to education software: you kind of have to have a competative selection of education software in order to "sell" people on the idea of using it. Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable trying to "sell" administrators on using OpenSource when the apps aren't really there.
Here's the "mission" statement from the Web site:
"SchoolForge's mission is to unify independent organizations that
advocate, use, and develop open resources for education. SchoolForge
is intended to empower member organizations to make open educational
resources more effective, efficient, and ubiquitous by enhancing
communication, sharing resources, and increasing the transparency of
development.
This is important and this is where individual users can help improve communication between different projects and recommend they share resources and intercooperate when possible. The more communication we can help facilitate between different projects that could cooperate or share resources, the better.
Sure, communication, cooperation, sharing resources, "facilitation", advocacy ... these terms sound watered-down and hollow to me. I don't believe that results of very much consequence are likely to follow from such limited aspirations as to merely be a middle-man / advocate. I think that the Schoolforge name could be used a little more proactively to effect more progress in the area of Opensource education software, and still remain consistent with its mission statement. I feel that Schoolforge continues to miss out on huge opportunities ... not money, just "marketshare" and the opportunity to have a greater impact. I've got an idea for a Co-Op system that could be right-at-home under a Schoolforge umbrella. More ideas out there? Let's see some!
-Charles Cossé