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
--
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Paul Nelson.............................. pnelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Riverdale High.......... 9727 SW Terwilliger Blvd. Portland, OR 97219
(503)892-0722......fax(503)892-0723................ http://pnelson.us
