[seul-edu] Forming a coalition to promote free and open tools and content in education

["David M. Bucknell" <david@members.iteachnet.com>]

I've been following the discussions inspired by the Red Hat response to 
the MS settlement proposal. Obviously it would be a great shot in the arm 
for all concerned if Red Hat got a respectable hearing. I think we all 
hope they do. Even if they win some sort of accomodation, however, we'll 
still have to answer many of the questions about "which way forward" that 
have been asked on this and other lists lately. It's both exciting and 
frustrating to see that each of the open source in education discussions we 
run into is at about the same stage, asking the question "What's the best way 
to convince a school or school system to give it a try?"

Seul, open source now, the Texan community ed group and open source schools 
are each struggling to put together the "next step." This situation is 
duplicated in each application category: course builders, 
intranet/collaboration apps, desktop Web site builders, mail clients (Web and 
desktop), you name it.

I hope we'll find a way to form an international "collaborative" or a 
"coalition for free and open source in education" that can be the work-base 
for each of these cases; after all, coders can, in many cases where the same 
licenses are used, "capitalize" on each other's code, sort of making use of 
the available best of the gene pool. Why can't those of use working to promote 
free and open source tools and content capitalize on each other's efforts? 
Let's create a sort of commercial/product-neutral "brand" that goes on each of 
our sites as volunteer members of this education-promoting collaborative or 
coalition (lately that word seems over-used, although appropriate for us ;-)). 
Participants would be defacto members of the "committee" that vets promotional 
material that could be used by anyone or any group wishing to promote free and 
open source tools and content.

When first designing Open Source Schools we had the discussion of how best to 
get the attention of the "right" people in a school and decided that the 
answer depended on whom you were talking to. So we set up the site according 
to the roles people play in schools: school admins, teachers, community 
members and then the more typical sys admins and tech coordinators. We 
essentially want to make the site of use to members of each of those groups. 
So, we'd like to join Seul and other groups in hopes that our site will 
realize this ambition. We think we've made a good start in two months, so we 
have something to contribute to the "cause".

Obviously SEUL and OFSET and other older groups have more to contribute. We'd 
like to formalize this working group so that we can hasten the arrival of a 
consensus on the best way forward.

Interested?

David Bucknell
Editor, OpenSourceSchools.org

Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu> said:

> On Wed, Nov 21, 2001 at 10:36:43PM -0500, Jonathan Opp wrote:
> > Take a look at http://www.redhat.com/opensourcenow for contact info.
> 
> I just took another look at the Reuters article referenced there.
> 
> Balmer apparently noted that "the money can be used to buy any kind of
> software, not just Microsoft's." Presumably he's counting on the fact
> that all the schools will still "choose" Microsoft.
> 
> Assuming this thing gets accepted tomorrow, is there still something we
> can do to show the schools that they have a choice (eg build a little
> information packet and get one to each of the schools)? Realistically,
> the right way to get them convinced is to have an advocate (student or
> teacher or admin) inside the school start things off and keep at it.
> 
> Even if we only get a few schools convinced, we can make good public
> relations out of them if we phrase things well.
> 
> I realize that Doug has been harping on this subject for a while, but
> he's right. I'm afraid I'm being a classic arm-chair project leader for
> this, since I have no idea what will actually convince school systems.
> So I'm going to shut up about this. Hopefully somebody has the beginnings
> of such a packet and can share it and start us off?
> 
> --Roger
> 



-- 
David M. Bucknell
http://members.iteachnet.org/~david
http://www.OpenSourceSchools.org
http://members.iteachnet.org/webzine/
Fax: (US) 775-244-0803