> 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. 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)
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