Re: [seul-edu] Summing up our discussion so far

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

On Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 02:55:05PM -0500, Doug Loss wrote:
> My feeling is that this coalition should start as an "umbrella"
> group, which provides an easy to navigate and unconfusing way to get
> to needed resources that already exist.

Doug and I talked this afternoon, and I agree with him. Of course,
there are still a number of big questions remaining. :)

One of the things that I noticed is that whoever keeps track of
the umbrella webpage is going to need to put some content on it.
Felipe Bergo made a mock-up page for us for schoolforge, at
http://moria.seul.org/~bergo/schoolforge

Looking at that page, I've become convinced that the umbrella webpage
can't just be static. People are going to have to update it with news or
something, so it doesn't look totally empty --- and updating it 'fairly'
by taking contributions from each group may be tricky.

> As needs are
> identified that aren't yet being provided for, the coalition site
> could be used to host work addressing those needs; but it shouldn't
> set up a subproject for that purpose if someone is already doing
> similar work.  Instead, it should bring those others into the
> coalition.  Or it could try to persuade current coalition members to
> take on the additional tasks.

Agreed.

> At the same
> time, we don't want to set ourselves up for "turf wars," where
> people get all caught up in ownership of a particular sector.

While I was making my list of "other places that host educational
development projects", I came up with quite a few. I'm becoming more
convinced that we shouldn't add another url into that mix.

I claim that schoolforge is too cool a name to devote to a redundant
application hosting project. :)

> As to what tools to use in building the site, since it would be
> basically connections to other sites, the groups at those sites
> should use whatever they're comfortable with.  If you're doing the
> work, you should choose the tools.

Yes. I am very adamant about this. That's why I stayed out of the tools
discussion --- talking about what tools *other people* should use seems
crazy to me. If you're doing the work, you can do it however you want.

> Now, what about names for the coalition?  We went through a number
> of fairly tortured acronyms before sort of settling on Schoolforge
> (since David Bucknell already owned it).  But in talking it over, we
> came to realize that we were actually thinking about two different
> ideas for the coalition.  One was the "umbrella" site I mentioned
> above.  The other was a centralized repository of educational
> projects, documents, lesson plans, etc.  I've clearly leaned toward
> the "umbrella" site idea, but the repository is needed too.  I think
> some of the things a repository ought to do can be covered very well
> by existing projects, but we may need a new one for hosting
> educational software projects, for example.  So I think we should

As I mentioned above, I'm not convinced a new project repository is so
useful at this point. The groups that are doing that will keep doing
that. As for an authoritative repository for documents, links, advocacy,
lesson plans.. people should tell me who does each of those now or is
suitable for expanding to include it, else maybe that should be one of
the early recommended projects for the umbrella page. (Or for a new group,
who gets linked to from the umbrella page. It's the same in the end.)

> keep the Schoolforge.net name for whatever repository we need, and
> use Learnux.org, suggested by Phil Collins and graciously agreed to
> by Gary Free (who had used Learnux in Toronto a while ago) as the
> name for the "umbrella" site.

I don't think the name learnux has nearly the motivational value of
schoolforge. I don't know what learnux would be or do, from the name.

> So let's talk (a little) about this, and see if we can't reach an
> agreement by Friday at the latest.  I'd like to be able to announce
> the formation of the Learnux coalition (or whatever we call it) in
> my next Linux in education report on Dec. 10!

This is a change from my original schoolforge.net suggestion. David ---
you should let us know what you think of this. It's your domain, after
all. :)

--Roger