I met David Trask and Matt Oquist at LinuxWorld Boston last week and we had a great discussion with a few other Red Hat folks about the current successes of K12LTSP and ways to improve the software and community around it. This is significant because this is the first time we got other Red Hat people aware of and excited about the K12LTSP project, which today exposes Fedora to hundreds of schools and countless thousands of students worldwide.
We came up with some objectives and action items from this meeting to further the goals of both K12LTSP and the Fedora Project. I believe that we have a huge opportunity here to work closer together and better the software for the education community.
Goals for us on this list are mainly development and administration of Fedora related education initiatives. I envision keeping k12osn as mostly educator end-user support for now, and we can later reorganize the community infrastructure around K12LTSP when we have a clearer picture of what it becomes.
Strawman Objectives for the next six months include: ==================================================== - Development discussion related to merging K12LTSP to become an official supported part of the Fedora Project. This means that more contributors will help K12LTSP development goals. - Perhaps K12LTSP can be a "mode" to enable in the standard Fedora. - Eventually convert K12LTSP to use the Muekow framework. Muekow potentially aligns with the basic building block goals of the Fedora Stateless project, so hopefully we can combine resources from multiple Fedora projects and achieve this by FC6 in a clean and Fedora supported way. - Collaborate on Samba and LDAP related integration possibly with Fedora Directory Server in order to achieve out-of-the-box centralized authentication between mixed platform school networks (Linux, Mac, Windows). - Plan Fedora's involvement in Open Source in Education conferences coming up, like the ones in ME and NH during June and July. - Reorganize the community to better support educators in the use of K12LTSP. - Design messaging for the promotion of the K12LTSP model. - Write more documentation to promote the K12LTSP model, and make it easier to setup a K12LTSP lab. - Professional production of an educational documentary video demonstrating the success of the K12LTSP model. A well made video would make it easier for LUG's worldwide to convince schools to try K12LTSP.
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-education-list Please share your ideas, comments, or questions here on fedora-education-list.
http://k12ltsp.org/contents.html K12LTSP Home Page
Warren Togami wtogami@redhat.com
Very well written Warren....very cool! :-)
Fedora Education Initiative fedora-education-list@redhat.com on Monday, April 10, 2006 at 6:28 PM +0000 wrote:
I met David Trask and Matt Oquist at LinuxWorld Boston last week and we had a great discussion with a few other Red Hat folks about the current successes of K12LTSP and ways to improve the software and community around it. This is significant because this is the first time we got other Red Hat people aware of and excited about the K12LTSP project, which today exposes Fedora to hundreds of schools and countless thousands of students worldwide.
We came up with some objectives and action items from this meeting to further the goals of both K12LTSP and the Fedora Project. I believe that we have a huge opportunity here to work closer together and better the software for the education community.
Goals for us on this list are mainly development and administration of Fedora related education initiatives. I envision keeping k12osn as mostly educator end-user support for now, and we can later reorganize the community infrastructure around K12LTSP when we have a clearer picture of what it becomes.
Strawman Objectives for the next six months include:
- Development discussion related to merging K12LTSP to become an
official supported part of the Fedora Project. This means that more contributors will help K12LTSP development goals.
- Perhaps K12LTSP can be a "mode" to enable in the standard Fedora.
- Eventually convert K12LTSP to use the Muekow framework. Muekow
potentially aligns with the basic building block goals of the Fedora Stateless project, so hopefully we can combine resources from multiple Fedora projects and achieve this by FC6 in a clean and Fedora supported way.
- Collaborate on Samba and LDAP related integration possibly with Fedora
Directory Server in order to achieve out-of-the-box centralized authentication between mixed platform school networks (Linux, Mac, Windows).
- Plan Fedora's involvement in Open Source in Education conferences
coming up, like the ones in ME and NH during June and July.
- Reorganize the community to better support educators in the use of
K12LTSP.
- Design messaging for the promotion of the K12LTSP model.
- Write more documentation to promote the K12LTSP model, and make it
easier to setup a K12LTSP lab.
- Professional production of an educational documentary video
demonstrating the success of the K12LTSP model. A well made video would make it easier for LUG's worldwide to convince schools to try K12LTSP.
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-education-list Please share your ideas, comments, or questions here on fedora-education-list.
http://k12ltsp.org/contents.html K12LTSP Home Page
Warren Togami wtogami@redhat.com
Fedora-education-list mailing list Fedora-education-list@redhat.com http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-education-list
David N. Trask Technology Teacher/Director Vassalboro Community School dtrask@vcsvikings.org (207)923-3100
Simply excellent news!
-Eric
Warren Togami wrote:
I met David Trask and Matt Oquist at LinuxWorld Boston last week and we had a great discussion with a few other Red Hat folks about the current successes of K12LTSP and ways to improve the software and community around it. This is significant because this is the first time we got other Red Hat people aware of and excited about the K12LTSP project, which today exposes Fedora to hundreds of schools and countless thousands of students worldwide.
We came up with some objectives and action items from this meeting to further the goals of both K12LTSP and the Fedora Project. I believe that we have a huge opportunity here to work closer together and better the software for the education community.
Goals for us on this list are mainly development and administration of Fedora related education initiatives. I envision keeping k12osn as mostly educator end-user support for now, and we can later reorganize the community infrastructure around K12LTSP when we have a clearer picture of what it becomes.
Strawman Objectives for the next six months include:
- Development discussion related to merging K12LTSP to become an
official supported part of the Fedora Project. This means that more contributors will help K12LTSP development goals.
- Perhaps K12LTSP can be a "mode" to enable in the standard Fedora.
- Eventually convert K12LTSP to use the Muekow framework. Muekow
potentially aligns with the basic building block goals of the Fedora Stateless project, so hopefully we can combine resources from multiple Fedora projects and achieve this by FC6 in a clean and Fedora supported way.
- Collaborate on Samba and LDAP related integration possibly with Fedora
Directory Server in order to achieve out-of-the-box centralized authentication between mixed platform school networks (Linux, Mac, Windows).
- Plan Fedora's involvement in Open Source in Education conferences
coming up, like the ones in ME and NH during June and July.
- Reorganize the community to better support educators in the use of
K12LTSP.
- Design messaging for the promotion of the K12LTSP model.
- Write more documentation to promote the K12LTSP model, and make it
easier to setup a K12LTSP lab.
- Professional production of an educational documentary video
demonstrating the success of the K12LTSP model. A well made video would make it easier for LUG's worldwide to convince schools to try K12LTSP.
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-education-list Please share your ideas, comments, or questions here on fedora-education-list.
http://k12ltsp.org/contents.html K12LTSP Home Page
Warren Togami wtogami@redhat.com
Thanks for kicking things off, Warren.
Here's a link to the "Open Letter to Educational Institutions" that I mentioned during our meeting last week: http://tinyurl.com/eaa99 (softwarefreedomday.org)
- Collaborate on Samba and LDAP related integration possibly with
Fedora Directory Server in order to achieve out-of-the-box centralized authentication between mixed platform school networks (Linux, Mac, Windows).
Single-sign-on is a very significant problem area for a lot of schools, both those that are ready to head directly into Samba/LDAP and those that [would] want to authenticate Linux boxes to their existing Active Directory network. It would be a huge win for Fedora if the ease of authentication configuration (for a Samba/LDAP server /or/ an AD client) compared favorably with Windows.
I don't think this would be an appropriate part of a really good solution to the above problem, but Dave and I have worked on a hackish Perl script that eases the pain of configuring Samba together with OpenLDAP, and I mention it here just FYI: http://www.majen.net/smbldap/ Since there's no obvious forthcoming "really good" solution, we're planning to continue to support this script for a while. We're interested in enhancing it to support FDS as well, but no work has yet been done yet toward that end.
--matt
Warren Togami wrote: [Mon Apr 10 2006, 06:28:35PM EDT]
I met David Trask and Matt Oquist at LinuxWorld Boston last week and we had a great discussion with a few other Red Hat folks about the current successes of K12LTSP and ways to improve the software and community around it. This is significant because this is the first time we got other Red Hat people aware of and excited about the K12LTSP project, which today exposes Fedora to hundreds of schools and countless thousands of students worldwide.
We came up with some objectives and action items from this meeting to further the goals of both K12LTSP and the Fedora Project. I believe that we have a huge opportunity here to work closer together and better the software for the education community.
Goals for us on this list are mainly development and administration of Fedora related education initiatives. I envision keeping k12osn as mostly educator end-user support for now, and we can later reorganize the community infrastructure around K12LTSP when we have a clearer picture of what it becomes.
Strawman Objectives for the next six months include:
- Development discussion related to merging K12LTSP to become an
official supported part of the Fedora Project. This means that more contributors will help K12LTSP development goals.
- Perhaps K12LTSP can be a "mode" to enable in the standard Fedora.
- Eventually convert K12LTSP to use the Muekow framework. Muekow
potentially aligns with the basic building block goals of the Fedora Stateless project, so hopefully we can combine resources from multiple Fedora projects and achieve this by FC6 in a clean and Fedora supported way.
- Collaborate on Samba and LDAP related integration possibly with Fedora
Directory Server in order to achieve out-of-the-box centralized authentication between mixed platform school networks (Linux, Mac, Windows).
- Plan Fedora's involvement in Open Source in Education conferences
coming up, like the ones in ME and NH during June and July.
- Reorganize the community to better support educators in the use of
K12LTSP.
- Design messaging for the promotion of the K12LTSP model.
- Write more documentation to promote the K12LTSP model, and make it
easier to setup a K12LTSP lab.
- Professional production of an educational documentary video
demonstrating the success of the K12LTSP model. A well made video would make it easier for LUG's worldwide to convince schools to try K12LTSP.
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-education-list Please share your ideas, comments, or questions here on fedora-education-list.
http://k12ltsp.org/contents.html K12LTSP Home Page
Warren Togami wtogami@redhat.com
Fedora-education-list mailing list Fedora-education-list@redhat.com http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-education-list
-- Open Source Software Engineering Consultant http://majen.net/
718 Fox Hollow Drive Hudson, NH 03051 U.S.A. +1 603.236.1054 (cell)
- Plan Fedora's involvement in Open Source in Education conferences
coming up, like the ones in ME and NH during June and July.
The NELS website is http://nelinux.net; we've got a flyer there that can be downloaded and distributed if you like. (Please do! :)
To this email I've attached the unpublished and still changeable schedule I'm working with at this point. How do you picture your involvement? We've mentioned a keynote by Warren as a possibility, and if you want to go that route I'd like to squeeze it in right after the welcome on the first day of Gould, and after the announcements on the second day of UNH.
You'll probably need real school footage for the video, but if you do want to get any shots of kids at NELS, Jeff Elkner's bringing a vanload of 'em up to UNH to participate in the SchoolTool development sprint; that may present some photo opportunities.
We're wide-open to other ideas you have about how you'd like to be a part of the symposia.
I don't know if this would interest you, but it just popped into my head: NELS doesn't have a t-shirt sponsor. It would be great to have NELS shirts and it would be fine to have, say, the Fedora logo on them...
--matt
-- Open Source Software Engineering Consultant http://majen.net/
718 Fox Hollow Drive Hudson, NH 03051 U.S.A. +1 603.236.1054 (cell)
On 4/10/06, Warren Togami wtogami@redhat.com wrote:
Strawman Objectives for the next six months include:
- Plan Fedora's involvement in Open Source in Education conferences
coming up, like the ones in ME and NH during June and July.
- Reorganize the community to better support educators in the use of
K12LTSP.
- Design messaging for the promotion of the K12LTSP model.
- Write more documentation to promote the K12LTSP model, and make it
easier to setup a K12LTSP lab.
- Professional production of an educational documentary video
demonstrating the success of the K12LTSP model. A well made video would make it easier for LUG's worldwide to convince schools to try K12LTSP.
First off, I welcome any contributions Fedora and/or Red Hat can make toward promoting Linux and open source in education. I'm a little confused about whether Fedora == Red Hat in this case, specifically I'm not sure how much money Fedora has at its disposal compared to Red Hat, so the following suggestions may be pointless (that is, if there isn't actually much money in play). But I'll make them anyhow. If Fedora doesn't have the money maybe someone else does.
There are two things I'd like to see:
Saying "the solution to this problem is to hold a conference" seems almost as lame as saying "what we need to do now is form a committee." But the open source in education community in the US, badly, badly needs a national conference. Nobody really knows what's going on on the national scale. What in God's name is going on in Indiana? Has anyone actually talked to Mike Huffman? There's a tremendous mix of grass-roots, corporate and larger state and district backed projects going on, but very little coordination or information moving around. Or if it is taking place, it is somewhere I don't know about. Most of the key players haven't met. Many of them are using free software because they don't have much money, which means they also don't have much money or time to travel to conferences, either. Not to mention networking with people from Spain, Brazil, etc., where they're plowing ahead of us in using free software in schools. So we're long overdue for a "Free Software in Schools Summit." We need to have one next year.
Increased presence of free software at all the mainstream ed-tech conferences around the country. I'm not actually attending the innumerable little conferences going on around the country, but my impression is that, with a few notable exceptions (lately thanks to Steve H.) the open source profile is quite low. This could easily be a full time job for someone all by itself. While having strong regional networks of open source supporters is vital, I think a few nationally barnstorming evangelists would make a big difference, too.
So... consider that my wishlist ;-)
--Tom
On Tue, 11 Apr 2006, Tom Hoffman wrote:
First off, I welcome any contributions Fedora and/or Red Hat can make toward promoting Linux and open source in education. I'm a little confused about whether Fedora == Red Hat in this case, specifically I'm not sure how much money Fedora has at its disposal compared to Red Hat, so the following suggestions may be pointless (that is, if there isn't actually much money in play). But I'll make them anyhow. If Fedora doesn't have the money maybe someone else does.
There's some money. Fedora gets its funding primarily from Red Hat. It's not exactly a river of money -- but for this kind of thing, I think we can make a case for enough money to hold a good conference.
There are two things I'd like to see:
Saying "the solution to this problem is to hold a conference" seems almost as lame as saying "what we need to do now is form a committee." But the open source in education community in the US, badly, badly needs a national conference. Nobody really knows what's going on on the national scale. What in God's name is going on in Indiana? Has anyone actually talked to Mike Huffman? There's a tremendous mix of grass-roots, corporate and larger state and district backed projects going on, but very little coordination or information moving around. Or if it is taking place, it is somewhere I don't know about. Most of the key players haven't met. Many of them are using free software because they don't have much money, which means they also don't have much money or time to travel to conferences, either. Not to mention networking with people from Spain, Brazil, etc., where they're plowing ahead of us in using free software in schools. So we're long overdue for a "Free Software in Schools Summit." We need to have one next year.
Is there general consensus about this? And what would be the goal -- information sharing, primarily?
Increased presence of free software at all the mainstream ed-tech conferences around the country. I'm not actually attending the innumerable little conferences going on around the country, but my impression is that, with a few notable exceptions (lately thanks to Steve H.) the open source profile is quite low. This could easily be a full time job for someone all by itself. While having strong regional networks of open source supporters is vital, I think a few nationally barnstorming evangelists would make a big difference, too.
How about lots of well-connected part-time evangelists who have a strong communications network, a strong unified message, and marketing materials?
--g
------------------------------------------------------------- Greg DeKoenigsberg || Fedora Project || fedoraproject.org Be an Ambassador || http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors -------------------------------------------------------------
Fedora Education Initiative fedora-education-list@redhat.com on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 at 2:24 AM +0000 wrote:
Is there general consensus about this? And what would be the goal -- information sharing, primarily?
Information sharing and exposure. Letting folks know that there is support out there. Perhaps showcase vendors who provide services geared toward the education sector. Speakers/Presenters who can demonstrate the why and how of implementing Open Source in Schools. This is actually what I do when speaking at numerous events in the Northeast. Aside from the obvious "how-to" is the political end of things....how do you sell the idea? How do you discreetly introduce something without ruffling feathers. (remember our discussion about covertly installing something like K12LTSP on a small scale without asking permission?). Obviously that message would need to be tailored for the event...etc. Another powerful message would be to hear from folks like Steve Kossakoski, Assistant Superintendent for SAU #16 in Exeter, NH. Having school administrators or tech folks who are primarily in a management post (as opposed to ground troops)....hear from someone like Steve....someone who has done it or is doing it with regard to Open Source/Linux in their school district....would have a lot of clout. Fear is a big factor here and we need to show people that there's nothing to worry about...and also...how to find help if they need it.
Increased presence of free software at all the mainstream ed-tech conferences around the country. I'm not actually attending the innumerable little conferences going on around the country, but my impression is that, with a few notable exceptions (lately thanks to Steve H.) the open source profile is quite low. This could easily be a full time job for someone all by itself. While having strong regional networks of open source supporters is vital, I think a few nationally barnstorming evangelists would make a big difference, too.
How about lots of well-connected part-time evangelists who have a strong communications network, a strong unified message, and marketing materials?
This could work as well so long as the funding and commitment is there to move these people (physically and virtually) to where they're needed.
On the topic of conferences....I'm not sure how effective a national conference would be as you'd only attract those who can afford to fly to a national conference. Perhaps regional conferences or maybe one East Coast and one West Coast? Just thoughts. One thing that makes things in Maine and NH works so well is that we have a strong network with which we are able to connect with one another. The Linux folks in Maine are all connected via the state technology in education organization called ACTEM (www.actem.org) (Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine) ACTEM is VERY active and has a very active listserv that connects us all....this in turn serves as a huge catalyst for online discussions that often lead to "how'd you do it with Linux/Open Source" discussions. If three people are having a discussion about an issue and they solve it with a Linux/FOSS solution....500+ lurkers on the list see that....and so the message spreads.... :-)
David N. Trask Technology Teacher/Director Vassalboro Community School dtrask@vcsvikings.org (207)923-3100
David Trask wrote:
On the topic of conferences....I'm not sure how effective a national conference would be as you'd only attract those who can afford to fly to a national conference.
At least initially, we need to bring the message itself to existing Ed-Tech conferences or directly to educators, rather than create our own conference. People attending an Open Source in Education specific conference would be mainly the already converted, so this would be mostly "preaching to the choir". Not the most effective use of limited resources.
For this reason, I highly suggest the top initial priority should be the production of an educational documentary video. This is an easy to reproduce message that scales cheaply, in a package that can more easily reach the uninitiated.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3189434260015988242 In addition to DVD distribution, the video could have the high accessibility and convenience of a simple URL like this example. (Requires Macromedia Flash.)
An educational documentary would simply be the most bang-for-the-buck and largest boost for the entire K12LTSP effort. I believe if we do this, this makes all subsequent promotion much easier. Entice educators nation-wide with this video. Then say, "Come to our regional OSS in Education conference to learn more."
They will.
Warren Togami wtogami@redhat.com
On 4/11/06, Warren Togami wtogami@redhat.com wrote:
David Trask wrote:
On the topic of conferences....I'm not sure how effective a national conference would be as you'd only attract those who can afford to fly to a national conference.
At least initially, we need to bring the message itself to existing Ed-Tech conferences or directly to educators, rather than create our own conference. People attending an Open Source in Education specific conference would be mainly the already converted, so this would be mostly "preaching to the choir". Not the most effective use of limited resources.
What I imagine is more of a national open source in education *summit*, I guess. That is, aimed at getting the people who are doing things with Linux and open source in education together in close physical proximity for a few days.
The most precise goal I would have is bringing together the grassroots folks who have been doing stuff in schools for years with the rapidly growing "enterprise" K12 Linux folk (Novell, Indiana, etc.) and also various non-profit players (CoSN, ISTE, Stupski Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, etc).
One thing which convinced me of the need for a pow-wow is my conversations with Helen King, who is the international relations person for The Shuttleworth Foundation. She has all kinds of meetings with people from Sun, IBM, etc., all of which seem to have people working on a variety initiatives that I've never heard of that should be relevant and helpful to our work, but seem to be completely disconnected from any reality I've experienced.
I don't think ANYONE understands more than a fraction of what's happening with open source in education right now. And if anyone does know, they aren't telling.
--Tom
Fedora Education Initiative fedora-education-list@redhat.com on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 at 2:28 PM +0000 wrote:
I don't think ANYONE understands more than a fraction of what's happening with open source in education right now. And if anyone does know, they aren't telling.
I do....except for Indiana ;-)
David N. Trask Technology Teacher/Director Vassalboro Community School dtrask@vcsvikings.org (207)923-3100
On 4/11/06, Greg DeKoenigsberg gdk@redhat.com wrote:
On Tue, 11 Apr 2006, Tom Hoffman wrote:
Increased presence of free software at all the mainstream ed-tech conferences around the country. I'm not actually attending the innumerable little conferences going on around the country, but my impression is that, with a few notable exceptions (lately thanks to Steve H.) the open source profile is quite low. This could easily be a full time job for someone all by itself. While having strong regional networks of open source supporters is vital, I think a few nationally barnstorming evangelists would make a big difference, too.
How about lots of well-connected part-time evangelists who have a strong communications network, a strong unified message, and marketing materials?
Well, that's good too. But one reason it would be nice to also have some national-scale evangelists is that they could get more keynote slots, which I think is pretty important in framing the overall conversaton in the ed-tech world.
Here's a related question: if you were a reporter for a national magazine looking for a quote on open source in education, how would you know how to call? If you're doing a story on gaming in education, you know to call Marc Prensky. If you're doing a story on digital storytelling, you call the digital storytelling guy. Open source? I'm not sure who you should call. My point here is not that we don't have leaders, because we do. However, to their benefit, they aren't leaders who want to stop working in schools and spend the next few years talking to press, giving speeches and sitting in airports. That's a good thing. However, we'd all be better off if SOMEONE was doing that on behalf of open source, and I can think of several large companies, including Red Hat, who might benefit greatly in the long run through that work.
--Tom
Tom Hoffman wrote:
snip...
There are two things I'd like to see:
Saying "the solution to this problem is to hold a conference" seems almost as lame as saying "what we need to do now is form a committee." But the open source in education community in the US, badly, badly needs a national conference. Nobody really knows what's going on on the national scale. What in God's name is going on in Indiana? Has anyone actually talked to Mike Huffman? There's a tremendous mix of grass-roots, corporate and larger state and district backed projects going on, but very little coordination or information moving around.
snip...
Yes, yes, yes!!!
Redhat was very helpful 5 years ago when K12LTSP was first being developed. They provided funds that helped us travel to several conferences with our students to show people what was happening when K12LTSP was brand new. Back then there were very few schools using Linux so having a presence at the big ed-tech conferences was a voice in the wilderness experience.
Tom is right on about needing a conference because the need is different now than it was in the early days. I don't think Eric or I feel the need as much to travel and show people what you can do because everywhere we go, there are people already using Linux in schools. The need now is to build conscience and awareness and develop a body of best practices and direction for open source software (and curriculum) in schools.
My suggestion? RH (and other education solution providers like Intel...) should create a series of Open Education Awards for the people working to provide open/public licensed software and curriculum for education. These people are often working for public schools and universities. It's good PR to get an award and it helps build support back home when your work is nationally recognized. Awards make for good press releases, are easy to give out and cost next to nothing.
Give out these awards at a national open source in education convention that piggy backs on one of the other big ed-tech conventions like NCCE [ http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2006/ ]. The NECC folks love open source and would gladly work with us to host the extra events. The advantage of using a vehicle like NECC is that many of the players go there already. You don't have to invent a layer of organization but instead, get to take advantage of what they have already done. You also get to showcase what's happening with open source in education in front of industry and educational leaders.
Good things will happen when you get the right people together. RH/Fedora has the name recognition, good reputation and goodwill of their organization all coming together. They could make this happen. They could also bring along the other reluctant industry players who would not strike out on their own.
Last year there were over 500,000 copies of K12LTSP downloaded from Eric's ftp box. Don't underestimate the ability of people with good ideas to change the world. It's happening already. Redhat/Fedora can help and I'd be glad to see them continue to support the open source in K12 movement.
;-) Paul
I'm still mulling over the national summit idea.
While having strong regional networks of open source supporters is vital, I think a few nationally barnstorming evangelists would make a big difference, too.
How does one become a "barnstorming evangelist"? I'm already an evangelist, but I know my barnstorming needs work... Seriously, I'd love to see something like this happening but I don't know how to manufacture it. [Inter]National speaker-types seem mostly to spring up on their own, by writing and speaking well, getting invited to more and more engagements, etc.
I've copied maddog since I'm guessing he's not on this list, so maybe he can chime in with ideas about building such a team of evangelists.
Perhaps a yearly summit is just the sort of thing to form and perpetuate such a phenomenon.
And for what it's worth, the goals of Software Freedom International are perfectly aligned with this sort of public education (as we say) about FOSS, so we'll be happy to do what we can. I've been looking for ways that SFD can be involved and I haven't identified any clear ones yet, other than posting relevant news stories and links our our website, etc.
--matt
-- Open Source Software Engineering Consultant http://majen.net/
718 Fox Hollow Drive Hudson, NH 03051 U.S.A. +1 603.236.1054 (cell)
On 4/12/06, Matt Oquist moquist@majen.net wrote:
I'm still mulling over the national summit idea.
While having strong regional networks of open source supporters is vital, I think a few nationally barnstorming evangelists would make a big difference, too.
How does one become a "barnstorming evangelist"? I'm already an evangelist, but I know my barnstorming needs work... Seriously, I'd love to see something like this happening but I don't know how to manufacture it. [Inter]National speaker-types seem mostly to spring up on their own, by writing and speaking well, getting invited to more and more engagements, etc.
Since more of the folks who work the ed-tech conference circuit have blogs now, I'm a bit more conscious of the whole process, just the fact that this time of year there's a pretty big ed-tech conference going on somewhere at any given time, and a handful of folks who seem to speak at all of them. For a few of these folks, it appears to be a career in itself. But generally, yes, this goes along with writing some books and/or shilling for your or someone else's company. Unfortunately, we have no education specific books to sell (am I forgetting something?), and I don't think there is an open source in ed-tech startup that is successful enough to allow its founder to spend most of the year galivanting around the country.
Perhaps a more plausible plan is wooing some of the people who already have the keynote/pundit gigs locked in. David Thornburg is actually doing pretty much straight-up Linux advocacy in his talks now. Does anyone know him personally? David Warlick installed Ubuntu on his daughter's computer today... http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2006/04/11/jumped-off-the-cliff-in-freefall/
I've copied maddog since I'm guessing he's not on this list, so maybe he can chime in with ideas about building such a team of evangelists.
That's a good example. We need something like Linux (in schools) International.
--Tom
On 4/11/06, Tom Hoffman tom.hoffman@gmail.com wrote:
Unfortunately, we have no education specific books to sell (am I forgetting something?)
ISTE.org, the organization behind NECC, has asked me to put together a book on Open Source in Education, for which I've been soliciting help from the lists over the last few weeks. I think it's a unique opportunity to determine what we want to say, and what people want to hear.
Perhaps a more plausible plan is wooing some of the people who already have the keynote/pundit gigs locked in. David Thornburg is actually doing pretty much straight-up Linux advocacy in his talks now. Does anyone know him personally?
I've been corresponding with him, and he has submitted a presentation for our Open Source lab at NECC which I think we'll likely accept.
Some additional thoughts:
1. Mark Shuttleworth's sponsorship of labs in South Africa, I think, has made a huge difference for interest in and acceptance of Open Source in schools there. That would sure help here, and there is plenty of need (think Gulf Coast). 2. At the Ed Tech shows that I've coordinated Open Source labs for (NECC and CUE), the huge draws have been Moodle, blogging, and podcasting. That seems to be the door that is open right now. 3. Just replacing proprietary software solutions is a limited vision that is unexciting to most educators. Collaborative learning and -- I think -- students participating in Open Source projects will likely be the key to broader interest. If we are just replacing what works, even if we are saving money, that's not a message that gets a lot of attention. But when Open Source does something that can't be done otherwise, then you'll see some excitement.
Steve
- At the Ed Tech shows that I've coordinated Open Source labs for
(NECC and CUE), the huge draws have been Moodle, blogging, and podcasting. That seems to be the door that is open right now.
Then we need to figure out what's wrong/missing in our messaging. It makes sense that those topics will be the most interesting to teachers, but what about system administrators and school administrators?
Phrases like "increase access to technology" and "better use of limited budgets" should mean something to these people (AFAICT), and if they're not listening we need to figure out what we can say that will get their attention.
I'm passionate about Free Software and I care deeply about education, but in addition it just plain bothers me, as a taxpayer, that my community unnecessarily (AFAICT) spends who-knows-how-many tens of thousands of dollars on software every year.
We need to reach other people and make these other points, because Moodle, blogging, and podcasting all work fine when you've got Windows on your desktop and you're uploading MS Word documents as Moodle assignments. It's great to get a foot in the door, but we need to make it clear that there's *so* much more benefit to FOSS in education than just web-based apps.
How can we get that message across?
Granted that Warren will be able to marshal the resources to put together a video, what exactly should the two or three main messages of that video be? Here are a couple starting suggestions that I haven't tried to make pithy or concise:
1. Education is about opening minds and discovering new horizons as part of a community, and the whole philosophy of FOSS matches perfectly with this. 2. Using FOSS in a school enables the school to freely distribute its software to parents and families, which helps to ... increase community involvement and break down economic barriers, or something.
--matt
-- Open Source Software Engineering Consultant http://majen.net/
718 Fox Hollow Drive Hudson, NH 03051 U.S.A. +1 603.236.1054 (cell)
On 4/12/06, Steve Hargadon steve@hargadon.com wrote:
On 4/11/06, Tom Hoffman tom.hoffman@gmail.com wrote:
Unfortunately, we have no education specific books to sell (am I forgetting something?)
ISTE.org, the organization behind NECC, has asked me to put together a book on Open Source in Education, for which I've been soliciting help from the lists over the last few weeks. I think it's a unique opportunity to determine what we want to say, and what people want to hear.
Oh yeah! Steve is clearly the furthest along in building his barnstorming evangelist resume ;-)
Perhaps a more plausible plan is wooing some of the people who already have the keynote/pundit gigs locked in. David Thornburg is actually doing pretty much straight-up Linux advocacy in his talks now. Does anyone know him personally?
I've been corresponding with him, and he has submitted a presentation for our Open Source lab at NECC which I think we'll likely accept.
Ah, you are on the ball, Steve. This is a big deal imho, it will the free software center a big boost in legitimacy, at least in some people's eyes. Thornburg has been around forever.
Some additional thoughts:
- Mark Shuttleworth's sponsorship of labs in South Africa, I think,
has made a huge difference for interest in and acceptance of Open Source in schools there. That would sure help here, and there is plenty of need (think Gulf Coast).
Foundation support is key. We're getting closer, consciousness is a lot higher now. One problem is that Foundation people and Corporate people will, by default, talk to each other (Mark Shuttleworth is a big exception here, too). We need to figure out how to get the Foundation people talking to the grassroots (one reason for a summit). I think they'll be amenable to it, but they don't know how to start the conversation.
- At the Ed Tech shows that I've coordinated Open Source labs for
(NECC and CUE), the huge draws have been Moodle, blogging, and podcasting. That seems to be the door that is open right now. 3. Just replacing proprietary software solutions is a limited vision that is unexciting to most educators. Collaborative learning and -- I think -- students participating in Open Source projects will likely be the key to broader interest. If we are just replacing what works, even if we are saving money, that's not a message that gets a lot of attention. But when Open Source does something that can't be done otherwise, then you'll see some excitement.
In the long run, I think the big paradigm shift will be triggered by the need for low-cost 1-to-1 initiatives. That's 3 to 5 years out though, and there isn't much to be done by us in the meantime to speed that particular process except cheer on OLPC.
--Tom
David N. Trask Technology Teacher/Director Vassalboro Community School dtrask@vcsvikings.org (207)923-3100
----- Original Message -----
Thursday, April 13, 2006 1:53:10 AM Registered: Message From: "Support list for opensource software in schools." k12osn@redhat.com "Robert Arkiletian" robark@gmail.com Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Fedora Education Initiative Launch To: "Support list for opensource software in schools." k12osn@redhat.com Cc: wtogami@redhat.com gdk@redhat.com
On 4/10/06, Warren Togami wtogami@redhat.com wrote:
I met David Trask and Matt Oquist at LinuxWorld Boston last week and we had a great discussion with a few other Red Hat folks about the current successes of K12LTSP and ways to improve the software and community around it. This is significant because this is the first time we got other Red Hat people aware of and excited about the K12LTSP project, which today exposes Fedora to hundreds of schools and countless thousands of students worldwide.
We came up with some objectives and action items from this meeting to further the goals of both K12LTSP and the Fedora Project. I believe that we have a huge opportunity here to work closer together and better the software for the education community.
Goals for us on this list are mainly development and administration of Fedora related education initiatives. I envision keeping k12osn as mostly educator end-user support for now, and we can later reorganize the community infrastructure around K12LTSP when we have a clearer picture of what it becomes.
Excellent news! However, IMO one of the main issues holding back large scale deployment of K12LTSP in some school districts is that upper management administrators are not comfortable with the support system (lists, OSS communities, etc) and lack the necessary support internally as most tech staff are more MS centric. Two things are needed. One is that official PAID support be available from a reputable company like Redhat as a safety net. Two that Redhat offer a crash training program (or video/book) to bring MS trained techs up to speed to support a turnkey K12LTSP solution. Some districts would not blink at paying the full price of RHEL if the support was there. In fact, I think they would prefer it. Sometimes *FREE* scares people if they don't really understand FOSS.
-- Robert Arkiletian http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/Fl_TeacherTool C++ GUI tutorial http://fltk.org/links.php?V19
_______________________________________________ K12OSN mailing list K12OSN@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn For more info see http://www.k12os.org
So. Let's get an update, shall we? :)
Warren's initial note is a good starting place. I'll make comments and questions inline.
On Mon, 10 Apr 2006, Warren Togami wrote:
I met David Trask and Matt Oquist at LinuxWorld Boston last week and we had a great discussion with a few other Red Hat folks about the current successes of K12LTSP and ways to improve the software and community around it. This is significant because this is the first time we got other Red Hat people aware of and excited about the K12LTSP project, which today exposes Fedora to hundreds of schools and countless thousands of students worldwide.
We came up with some objectives and action items from this meeting to further the goals of both K12LTSP and the Fedora Project. I believe that we have a huge opportunity here to work closer together and better the software for the education community.
Goals for us on this list are mainly development and administration of Fedora related education initiatives. I envision keeping k12osn as mostly educator end-user support for now, and we can later reorganize the community infrastructure around K12LTSP when we have a clearer picture of what it becomes.
Strawman Objectives for the next six months include:
- Development discussion related to merging K12LTSP to become an
official supported part of the Fedora Project. This means that more contributors will help K12LTSP development goals.
- Perhaps K12LTSP can be a "mode" to enable in the standard Fedora.
- Eventually convert K12LTSP to use the Muekow framework. Muekow
potentially aligns with the basic building block goals of the Fedora Stateless project, so hopefully we can combine resources from multiple Fedora projects and achieve this by FC6 in a clean and Fedora supported way.
- Collaborate on Samba and LDAP related integration possibly with Fedora
Directory Server in order to achieve out-of-the-box centralized authentication between mixed platform school networks (Linux, Mac, Windows).
Warren... any update on these technical tasks? How are they progressing?
- Plan Fedora's involvement in Open Source in Education conferences
coming up, like the ones in ME and NH during June and July.
We're trying to get someone to attend besides Warren -- who I presume is going to at least one, if not both.
Also, we're looking to hold a local event here in North Carolina. Hey, NELS folks -- got any materials we can leverage for a one-day conference for Technology Coordinators?
- Reorganize the community to better support educators in the use of
K12LTSP.
- Design messaging for the promotion of the K12LTSP model.
This is another piece we're working on funding for. We'd like a full-time person working on this.
- Write more documentation to promote the K12LTSP model, and make it
easier to setup a K12LTSP lab.
See above.
- Professional production of an educational documentary video
demonstrating the success of the K12LTSP model. A well made video would make it easier for LUG's worldwide to convince schools to try K12LTSP.
Our hope is that we can either (a) send a cameraperson to NELS (still working on that), or (b) send a cameraperson to our local event (cheaper, heh.)
--g
------------------------------------------------------------- Greg DeKoenigsberg || Fedora Project || fedoraproject.org Be an Ambassador || http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors -------------------------------------------------------------
- Plan Fedora's involvement in Open Source in Education conferences
coming up, like the ones in ME and NH during June and July.
We're trying to get someone to attend besides Warren -- who I presume is going to at least one, if not both.
Sounds good.
Also, we're looking to hold a local event here in North Carolina. Hey, NELS folks -- got any materials we can leverage for a one-day conference for Technology Coordinators?
Our website (http://nelinux.net) runs on Moodle, and we're asking all our presenters to create courses with their session content. So that might be useful. If you'd like we can talk offline about you possibly using nelinux.net to host courses for your own event.
Our hope is that we can either (a) send a cameraperson to NELS (still working on that), or (b) send a cameraperson to our local event (cheaper, heh.)
You're more than welcome if you decide to come to NELS. :)
--matt
-- Open Source Software Engineering Consultant http://majen.net/
718 Fox Hollow Drive Hudson, NH 03051 U.S.A. +1 603.236.1054 (cell)
education@lists.fedoraproject.org
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