Re: [seul-edu] Great do list from Teemu: Forming a coalition

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

Well, this is a very perceptive set of responses Roger has posted, all worth
thinking about. I am thrilled to be able to contribute and be involved and
will now make sure that the schoolforge.net domain points to your site.

My single reservation is (as I said in reply to Jeff's post) whether the wiki
is the right tool for curriculum, but obviously I don't have an alternative up
my sleeve. 

Should we play with what Roger's installed for a bit while we think of the
alternatives? It seems to me that there are unlikely to be _any_ perfect fits,
but I respect Roger's reservations about the old code and graphics-heavy
nature of sourceforge.

I will get on the domain dns now and probably get back to the list tomorrow.
Thanks for everyone's enthusiasm for making something good happen.

David
Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu> said:

> On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 12:21:12AM -0000, David M. Bucknell wrote:
> > Personally, however, I intended Schoolforge to go beyond apps into another 
> > area: the development of a school's lessons, courses and later, curricula, 
> > that could be used by anyone anywhere. 
>  
> I was planning to throw all of our ideas and projects onto schoolforge. I
> pictured it much more as a place where you stir in students, teachers,
> developers, and advocates, and together they forge the school
> that they want. They need educational software for this, they need
> advocacy material, they need case studies, they need curricula and
> courses... everything.
> 
> Among other things, Schoolforge is:
> 
> * A watering hole where developers can get together, interact, work
>   together to come up with new tools and brainstorm ideas.
> * A watering hole where teachers can get together to develop new open
>   coursework and curricula.
> * A watering hole where advocates and school people can interact,
>   learn what works and what doesn't work, and learn how to 'sell' their
>   ideas so they gain more acceptance.
> * A well-known place where teachers and students can find what they're
>   looking for and learn about new material.
> * A well-known place where new developers can come to find interesting
>   topics and projects needing volunteers.
> 
> All in one simple place, with a name that actually implies education.
> 
> Speaking of names, the acronyms that you guys are throwing around are fun,
> but they don't mean anything to me. Why do we have to have what amounts
> to a 'secret codename' for our group? How about something clearer, like
> the Schoolforge Coalition? Or the Schoolforge Group. Or just Schoolforge.
> 
> Of course, all of this *is* a lot of work. We've got some momentum right
> now. A lot of these projects do divide up cleanly as you describe above.
> We've got starts with Les's case studies page and Les's education software
> index. (Go Les!)
> Ideally we'd start hearing from volunteers to lead some of them forward,
> and then focus on the ones which are making progress... :)
> 
> I set up the sourceforge code on schoolforge.seul.org. I haven't
> made SSL work yet so you can't make an account, so it's not very
> useful. But one of the things that I noticed is that it's old code (nearly
> a year old), made at least in part by people who were planning to take it
> proprietary. There are bugs. If we use this code we will be maintaining
> it, patching it, etc. We could use one of the 4 or 5 other free forks out
> there, but it's not clear to me that any of them are in better shape.
> 
> We might be much more comfortable using
> phpgroupware (http://www.phpgroupware.org/).
> Mike set up a demo at http://www.findaschool.org/~mviron/phpgroupware/
> (user admin password admintest)
> 
> or a wiki as some other people have suggested
> 
> or simply having parts of the website in CVS and having people edit it.
> 
> I think there's a lot to be said for something much simpler than
> sourceforge.
> 
> Also, note that each of the above tasks may well be solved best by
> different solutions. A wiki for the curriculum people. A sourceforge for
> the application developers (or just the informal services we offer now,
> without a forced gui glue). A php script or two for the case studies
> and educational applications people. And so on. The components don't
> all have to live on the same computer. Perhaps schoolforge should be
> the place connecting them all.
> 
> > Sorry to make it so long. I just wanted people to hear and have the chance to 
> > comment on whether they think this is a worthwhile idea -- and especially 
> > whether it fits with SEUL/Edu.
> 
> I think once schoolforge.net gets moving, we should phase
> www.seul.org/edu/ out of existence. Maybe some other groups would merge
> in as well?
> 
> Doug has the final say here, since he's the seul/edu project leader. But
> from my perspective, the goal is to get a more organized group of people
> tackling the Linux in education problem. It's a really big problem, and it
> needs all the people we can throw at it. What it's called doesn't matter
> --- whatever gets people into it. Having a url and a name that isn't
> meaningless (like, say, seul) will help draw the audience that you need.
> 
> --Roger (SEUL project leader)
> 



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