Re: [seul-edu] (FWD) webring/mirror/etc

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2001 at 09:38:14PM -0500, Michael Hall wrote:
> I'm happy to go with developing the Seul link page. Are others happy with
> this becoming the `central' page that we all mirror or link to, for the
> time being at least? Are there any better candidates?
[snip] 
> - links not only to `open source education' sites, but to all sites likely
> to be useful to people (howtos, tutorials, software, advocacy, etc). This
> would become a large database, but if it is going to be THE database then
> it can't help being large.

I like the idea of a comprehensive database, but the jumble that is
http://www.seul.org/edu/links.html also doesn't seem very useful to
me. It's good to know about every option, yes, but I want to know a
good answer to my specific question. "I need a Linux replacement for
Outlook." Consider using web mail, such as IMP or Squirrel Mail. Here's
a guy who's using them now and can tell you more. Great, thanks. "I need
to do a presentation next week to the administration of using Linux in
my middle school." Here's a template that other people have liked. Great,
thanks. "I'm going to teach a class next term on Linux networking." Here's
a curriculum somebody else used for that. Great, thanks. "I'm thinking
about contributing to a project working on Linux in schools." Here are
the five most popular ones, how they differ, what they've produced,
and what they're aiming for. Great, thanks.

A list of every project or document ever started about Linux in education
is useful to *somebody*, yes, but only as a starting point. We need to
always have an eye toward boiling it down to a few useful documents and
sites which cover all of the other ones.

I think the trickiest part will be choosing presentation and categories
so it's useful for as many people as possible. Seul's links.html is a
good start for some of that, but isn't going to be nearly enough. Eg,
the 'Resources' section of http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-jr/ is
much simpler and to the point. I guess we need a compromise.

> Really, this page is only a small part of what needs to be done. We need to
> build a respected international OSS education group to move things forward
> (OSEC?) at all levels. There is no reason why the OSEC website's
> link/resources page couldn't be/be maintained by Seul's page (is there?).

I think that will work great for now. I would really like to migrate
much of the content from the seul/edu website over to somewhere else,
such as schoolforge if that becomes appropriate. The seul/edu website as
it currently stands is probably not the right website to go to if you
want to learn about Linux in education, except insofar as it tells you
about the seul-edu mailing list. And the url "http://www.seul.org/edu/";
sure doesn't yell out "Linux in education" to me.

> - look at developing an education distro, or customisation script(s), or
> both.

The hardest part here is to actually find, package, and test real live
educational applications. It's tempting to solve the infrastructure
problems first, but if we make the packages, everything else will fall
into place. I bet if we made a CD worth of high-quality applications
that schools can use and gave it to Red Hat, they would do the work
required to finish off an education-oriented distribution, plus market
it and help maintain and extend it. Or Mandrake. Or SuSE. Or all of them.

A while ago Bill and I made a big list of applications, at
http://cvs.seul.org/~arma/seul_cdrom.html
That file is almost a year old now. There is so much stuff out there,
but teachers won't find it and if they do it will be a badly packaged
tarball with no instructions. *That* is what needs to be fixed.

Also take a look at Chris Ellec's Linux for Kids CD, available as ISO
from ftp://ftp2.seul.org/linuxforkids.iso (110 megs). Again it's over
a year old.

> Another 2 cents ... I'll have a dollar soon!
> Mick

Thanks for working on this!
--Roger