Re: How about an inter-project project?

["Odile Bénassy" <obenassy@magic.fr>]

There must be some kind of "telepathy" between Doug and me, for I was
precisely thinking about the same issues on the same night. I could even
claim for priority, if you consider that we Europeans have our nights
before you ;-)

Well, it is not going to be an easy thing to actually get open content
material for our tools (especially when they are not ready, like mine). 
For us this is all very exciting job, and full of suspense, but for the
poor "normal teachers", who do not want to work until exhaustion (like
Bill does) ? 
At least in France, teachers do not want to change their habits, and you
can understand, because they rely on their preceding years' job, and
students are exhausting anyway.

To my opinion it will happen, of course, but maybe a kind of advertising
work would help. 
Yet how ? 
In France, only one thing works: administrative directives :-(  
Elsewhere: you will tell me !

----------------
Doug Loss wrote:
> 
> I was thinking last night about what would be needed to get our work
> actually used in schools.  Besides having software for pedagogical
> purposes that runs on Linux, we'll need lesson plans and exercises that
> use that software and teaching material in the school's native
> language.  Interestingly enough, we have a few projects that can address
> each aspect of the need.  I wonder if we shouldn't work on preparing
> everything we need to use one or another program and then use that
> effort as a template on which to build others.
> 
> Perhaps we could ask the open textbook project to work on a geometry
> text geared toward Dr Geo while at the same time helping Hilaire refine
> and improve the program.  Lesson plans could be developed in concert
> with the open textbook, and everything could be passed on to Barret's
> translation project for conversion into multiple languages.  Since Dr
> Geo is designed for multiple languages it should work very nicely.
> 
> If all this works out we could consider Micah and Mauricio's Derive-like
> program and Odile's Promath for areas to work diligently on.  If we can
> come up with enough course material (let's not forget GNUplot) for
> mathematics, we might be able to get some Linux machines in schools for
> mathematics computer labs.
> 
> What do you all think?
> 
> --
> Doug Loss                 A life spent making mistakes is not only
> Data Network Coordinator  more honorable, but more useful than a
> Bloomsburg University     life spent doing nothing.
> dloss@bloomu.edu                G. B. Shaw

-- 
Odile Bénassy,
fonctionnaire, Orléans, France
"obenassy@magic.fr"
"http://perso.magic.fr/obenassy"