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

[michael@haywood.k12.nc.us]

Hello David,

It is exciting to see more and more people get involved and I agree that at some
point we all need to put together some type of "coalition" maybe even sponsor our
own conference. 

Michael Williams
http://www.k12linux.org
http://www.haywood.k12.nc.us




> 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
> 
>