[school-discuss] SchoolForge procedural updates

["Justin Riddiough" <jriddiough@xxxxxxxxx>]

First, I'd like to welcome DIDASCA, the "The First Italian Cyber Schools for Lifelong Learning" as a member of the SchoolForge coalition.  The members page has been updated to reflect their membership.

On the subject of the coalition, and how things are shaping up towards a member structure - I've presented this to the core list and would like to share it here as well for input.  The approach we are taking to reworking the procedures is this, it is proposed to the core list initially, and then to the discuss list.  Changes to the procedures will serve as a draft until the document is completed as a whole.  The goal is to reflect that SchoolForge and its resources are provided by the FLOSS community, and to ensure that members are active.  As always, we are looking for any input or suggestions/discussion.  

http://www.schoolforge.net/procedures.php

-> cut <- Schoolforge membership is by groups, not by individuals. Individuals can, and ought to be, members of one or more of the groups in the coalition, but not members of the coalition itself. The coalition doesn't do much of the actual work of promoting free resources in education. It just provides a unified face to the various groups for the outside world to see, and gives them an easy means of communicating among themselves. Individuals should be where the work is, in the member groups -> end cut <-

-> replace <-The SchoolForge website is a product of the SchoolForge coalition. Coalition membership is by groups whose efforts extend beyond this website, not by individuals.  The website serves to provide individuals a starting point towards learning about educational efforts within FLOSS, and an opportunity to non-technical (non-programmers) users to become involved in projects that follow prinicpals shared with the more technical aspects.  Through these interactions, individuals are encouraged to learn about, apply, and become active participants in coalition member efforts. -> end replace <-

As we have attempted to collect feedback from the various members of SF towards the development of the website - we have found that many members are inactive.  What I'd like to propose is cleaning up the list - we will create a list of the addresses that bouncedback, and the related projects - we will take that list and post it here to see if anyone might be able to follow up with any of the members.  If not, after a week or so, we could start to mark some of the member entries as inactive.  I think once the list is cleaned up, we could attract new coalition members and projects to reflect the vibrant communities and efforts taking place in FLOSS.