Re: [seul-edu] Site tools for Schoolforge

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

Here's another perspective. Mimerdesk is indeed impressive; so too, however,
is phpgroupware, and for that matter sourceforge. I am not at all against
taking mimerdesk up on their offer, but I would stipulate that members of
similar efforts such as phpgroupware, and even schoolmation, and perhaps
others, be explicitly invited into the effort.  

Below I give what I think are a decent set of criteria for the first project
and its tool. To me this is the necessary prelude to a choice of apps.

First, I want to say something about what I think/hope will/should be the airm
of this coalition.

I'm involved because I would like to see us (the community) work together
(pool resources to be more effective) to develop an effective means of:

1. positive pr (promotion of free/open source)(This includes what
opensourceschools.org does now and also news, which we have discussed a bit)
2. training
3. resources for all levels (users, sys admins, developers)
4. educational app host
5. educational lessons, courses and, eventually, curriculum
6. a pilot online school (eventually)

I used "means of" above, rather than "tool" because I do not mean a huge,
all-inclusive app. In that sense, I agree with what Roger said yesterday with
his list.

But of the above six tasks, the ones that this group should focus on, IMHO,
are 3,4, and 5, with #4 the obvious first step as that is what people have
most experience with. Furthermore, I am here to offer the not insignifcant
foundation of opensourceschools.org for implementing 1, if not 2 and 3. 6 is
down the line.

But I would like to see 4 and 5 combined. To do this requires not only
software that can meet the needs of collaborating document developers as well
as software developers (that's why I thought the sourceforge software needed
extending), but also An INTERFACE adjustment to accomodate less techy, but
nevertheless willing _teachers_ willing to write educational materials and
curricula.

Again, I am not in favor of the Wiki as a curriculum tool.

The tool we want should:
1.allow the formation of projects for either software or curriculum (in which,
for now, I'll include lessons, units, assessment, whole courses and entire
school k-? plans)
2. provide bulletin board communication among project members/users
3. an optional tie-in to mailman
4. cvs for apps 
5. a version of cvs for texts and multimedia lessons (so that we can apply
diff for example)
6. a front end that makes searching AND browsing of all projects possible AND EASY

Participation in projects should NOT REQUIRE comfort with anything other than
a browser.

David



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