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

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

Let's do this together. I completely support the idea that such a
coaltion/collaboration should be multilingual and multinational. Coming from a
background in international schools and being married to a Colombian who
teaches Spanish and French, and living and working in asia, I think your list
is a good idea.

I think that for starters a lot of Linux and other free/open site admins might
be on this list and should speak up if they are willing to work with the
suggested commuity group. 

Likewise, those who belong to LUGS and other relevant groups could help a
great deal by asking their members to speak up. I'll volunteer to be secretary
for the start, keeping track of who wants to be in on the project and which
goals get adopted, pretty much by consensus.

To add my two cents to the great task list already begun, a lot has already
been done and just needs organizing and shaping. There are loads of arguments
for free and open source in education out there and even bibliographies of
them. When we find one, let's post it to an archive (oss@members.iteachnet.org
is a new list that was used to start open source schools but is sort of
dormant now, and as it uses mailman it would make a nice repository of posts
specifically meant to give the coalition ammunition).

Then whoever's up to it can participate in the ongoing creation of a super
bibliography and a _few_ well-taylored introductions for each of the audiences
we wish to reach: school admins, teachers, board members, parents, students

As for a Web ring, I guess that sounds good. I can bet anyone interested in
Open Source Schools will want it to be a member. How about SEUL, Doug?

I don't think we need to join a Web ring, but we can mirror a single page with
a list of links to all members. It would be available (prominently) on each of
our sites, right?


As Doug pointed out, the "vetting" of promotional documents will probably need
to be more careful than casual. As he also says, the big players need to be
attracted to the cause. It seems to me we're talking about more than Linux,
though, and I suspect this was intended, but not stated. I'm just saying it
aloud. I would err on the side of including both the "free" and the "open"
portions of the community, as well as the companies that work with the
software.

 Michael Hall <admin@openlearningcommunity.org> said:

> 
> Doug:
> 
> I'm happy to do that (look into web-rings, contact links worldwide).
> Here in Oz (er, ... Australia) we teachers have 6 weeks holidays coming up
> in just over two weeks, so if it can wait til then, no problem!
> 
> I guess my own special interest in such a coalition or whatever would be
> the `global' rather than just the `US' side of things ... nothing against
> you guys (of course), but when you get into detail about how things work
> in the US, those of us who don't live there can lose track of things
> sometimes. I'm sure it works the other way round, too.
> 
> Language is another issue ... if a coalition is to be
> global/international, then can we expect everyone to work in English?
> 
> I'd suggest that these languages AT LEAST are pretty important (I'm only
> talking sheer numbers here):
> 
> Chinese
> Hindi
> Spanish
> Arabic
> Portuguese
> French (as an international language with reach into Africa)
> Russian
> Indonesian/Malaysian
> Japanese
> 
> I know this is a real complication, but `global' does include the rest of
> the world! :-)
> 
> Michael
> 
> On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, Doug Loss wrote:
> 
> > Michael Hall wrote:
> > > 
> > > > What you're talking about sounds like a web-ring.  I never thought of
> > > > that before, but it might be a good idea to get all the Linux in
> > > > education sites into a web-ring.
> > > 
> > > Go Doug! GREAT IDEA!
> > > 
> > Mick,
> > 
> >    Your task, should you accept it...  I admit I don't know much about
> > web-rings.  Could you look into what's involved, and possibly contact
> > some (most, all) of the sites on our Links Worldwide page and see if
> > they're interested?  If that will take more time and effort than you can
> > afford to spend, let me know and I'll coerce^H^H^H^H^H^Hpersuade some
> > other folks to help you on it.
> > 
> > Doug Loss
> > drloss@home.com
> > 
> 
> -- 
> ################################
> Michael Hall
> admin@openlearningcommunity.org
> m.hall@latis.net.au
> http://openlearningcommunity.org
> 
> 



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