Re: [seul-edu] Draft letter of invitation for Schoolforge

[milo <milo@fullsite.com>]

We would of course like to join schoolforge if you will accept us.
Our group name would be Schoolmation (Web based educational management and
course delivery software - schoolmation.net)
The contact person will be Myles O'Meara (schoolmation developer)
Thanks for the opportunity.
Myles O'Meara
schoolmation.net


Doug Loss wrote:

> This is a first draft of a letter of invitation to be sent to all
> prospective members of the Schoolforge coalition.  It would be nice to
> get as many members as possible in the initial announcement, so we can
> show ourselves to be a broad-based coalition rather than just a few
> groups seeming to want to assume the mantle of "Linux in education."
> Please critique it.
>
> Hello.  We know that you are working at furthering the use of Linux and
> free software in general [this may be replaced by "free resources" in
> the letter to non-software or advocacy projects such as open lesson
> plans, etc.].  We are members of groups with similar goals.  Up until
> now all of our individual projects have suffered from low visibility and
> the tendency to repeat work that others were already doing or had
> already done.
>
> When Red Hat Software made a counter-proposal to Microsoft's offer of
> settling an antitrust lawsuit by giving US$1 Billion to US schools, we
> were galvanized to try to take advantage of the sudden publicity this
> gave the use of free software in education.
>
> We started planning for a coalition of groups that were all working to
> make free software and resources more widely used in education.  You'll
> find a description of this coalition (called Schoolforge) below [insert
> David Bucknell's mission statement below].  We currently have numerous
> members, including Open Source Schools, SEUL/edu, and RedHat [I mention
> only these three because they probably have the highest name recognition
> at the moment].  We'd like to invite you to join the coalition and help
> us further our shared goals of providing free resources to our schools.
> To join Schoolforge, just reply to this message with the name of your
> group and the contact person.  We'll add you to the list.  If you'd like
> to take part in the discussions and work of forming Schoolforge, go to
> http://www.seul.org/edu/ and join the mailing list.  That's where all
> the organizational work is taking place.  We hope to welcome you on
> board!
>
> --
> Doug Loss          As long as I have you there is just
> drloss@suscom.net  one other thing I'll always need--
> (570) 326-3987     tremendous self control.
>                           Ashleigh Brilliant