Re: [seul-edu] Beta draft of initial public announcement for Tuesday

[Bill <selinux@home.com>]

On Saturday 05 January 2002 17:18, you wrote:
> William Abernathy wrote this for us with recommendations from David
> Bucknell and me.  Read it and give us your opinions quickly, so we
> can revise it if needed and let our translators work on it.  We'd
> like to have it available and ready to go in all languages by
> Tuesday.
>
> SCHOOLFORGE COALITION TO ADVANCE OPEN RESOURCES IN EDUCATION
>
> THE INTERNET, January 8, 2002 -- Schoolforge, a global coalition of
> online groups dedicated to promoting open resources in education,
> announced its formation today. The online project is located at
> http://www.schoolforge.net.
>
> In November of 2001, members of the online groups SEUL/edu
> (http://www.seul.org/edu), Open Source Schools
> (http://www.opensourceschools.org), and the K-12 Linux in Schools
> project (http://www.k12os.org) decided to develop a central
> organization to provide help for educators seeking to pursue the
> advantages of open resources and open source/free software.
> Composed of twenty-six open-resource-focused educational
> organizations on five continents, the all-volunteer Schoolforge
> project hopes to harness the collective strengths of educators by
> enabling them to share technical and pedagogical expertise far
> beyond the confines of their districts.
>
> "For too long," says SEUL/edu leader and Schoolforge spokesman Doug
> Loss, "our any projects suffered from isolation and low visibility.
                    ^^^
> Our lack of a unified organization often meant that our efforts as
   ^^^      eliminate these words .       ^^^^             
> educators and as technologists were wasted on duplicating 

each others'  <== ditch these words

> work, neither building on each others' successes nor
           ^ period  then "We neither built on ...
> learning from each others' failures."
    ^^^^ learned
> Schoolforge is intended to help its member organizations to:
>     * introduce open resources, including free/open source
> software, to primary and secondary educational settings;
>     * help educators use and develop open resources, including free
> curricula and free software;
                 , curriculum development assistance and free software
>     * foster local and global volunteer support networks to
> implement free/open source educational solutions; and
>     * provide open forums for educators to share information with
> colleagues, and with corporate and governmental educational
> stakeholders.
>
> Schoolforge member organizations are made of volunteers, teachers
> and technicians in elementary and high schools who are committed to
> harnessing the Internet and open resources to help teachers teach
> and help students learn. Contributions to open resource projects
> are free and open to anyone who desires to use them, and can never
> be withdrawn from public use.
>
> Schoolforge's member groups will bring the power of open resources
                                                       ^^^ delete
> to primary and secondary educators. While some groups are focused
> on bringing open source and free software resources to schools in
> need of low- or zero-cost alternatives to proprietary software,
> other member organizations have broader goals: "When we use the
> term 'open resources,' we mean a lot more than free software," Loss
> says. "Open resources are educational tools made by educators, for
> educators, sharing the experience they've gained in both the
> classroom and the lab. That can include everything from folk wisdom
> to lesson plans to technical documentation."
>
> Visitors are invited to review case study files from SEUL/edu,
> including successful free software deployments in schools from
> Pasco, Washington to New York City, from Zacatecas, Mexico, to
                                   , (make a comma separated list)
> Aldgate, South Australia and to read thought-provoking articles
> from educators around the world at Open Source Schools. In addition
> to these technological successes, Schoolforge member projects such
> as the Open Book Project (http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/) and the new
> OpenSchooling Project hope to empower educators to create a free,
> standards-compliant curriculum for K-12 schools.
>
> "We're hoping," Loss said, "to put behind us the day when computers
                                                         ^^^^^^^^ move
> were used simply to teach students how to use branded computer
> products, and to lock hapless school districts into a never-ending
> treadmill of spending on hardware and software. We don't want
                                    to the end of the sentence ^^     
> another teacher ever to have to learn a proprietary interface, only
> to have his or her experience rendered useless with the next
> product upgrade or business failure. Open resources promise to make
> technology a powerful tool for education, not the other way
> around."
>
> CONTACT:
> The Schoolforge member organization or individual that sent you
> this release, or
>
> Doug Loss
> (570) 326-3987
> dloss@seul.org

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