On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 12:25 PM, David Nalley <david.nalley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > You could hold a 'regional' workshop invite teachers to it - partner > with a local LUG to show off open source. Maybe setup an impromptu > lab. Perhaps we don't even term it as a open source workshop - but > more of a technology workshop. And I know just the LUG to do it -- Karsten, we can talk about this off list because it sounds like something that the Cabrillo College GNU/Linux Users Group could host in Central California. > But really I'd like to know what the end goals you are seeking. I > understand that you have said that you want to bring more open source > to educators - but I guess why is the question? Are we looking to get > them to show off open source, become users of OSS? Are we looking to > make them into Robby Workmans - teachers by day and packagers by > night? Or are we trying to get them to reveal (or open their class to > us so that we can) open source to their students. Or all of the above? > (and if it's all of the above, what's the primary target among those?) >From a purely evangelical standpoint, getting teachers exposed to FOSS (at a minimum) or getting them to be users of FOSS in the classroom (at the most) raises the profile of open source, and with that higher profile, the profile of Fedora is raised along with it. Not only does it benefit those teachers choosing to use it -- especially those teachers in computer-type classes -- but students being exposed to it in high school get an advantage as they go into college, especially those going into something digital related, by having a wider range of knowledge. > I can't imagine that a teacher (or anyone else) would want to spend a > day listening to a sales pitch (even if the item was free as in beer), > or even propaganda. So my second question is - what's the > demonstrable benefit for them? Especially if they are not teaching > something related to computers? Some states like Florida (and maybe California) require their teachers to attend seminars related to education during the course of the year, for which they get credit or "points" or something (if anyone is a teacher in a state with this requirement and can elaborate, that would help). An open source seminar might beat the heck out of a "Latest New Age Discipline Techinques" seminar or something like that. I hope. > I am asking that > not to be difficult, but I think we often get so used to showing off > 'cool stuff' to technophiles, geeks and Linux-lovers that we lose > sight of the fact that just because it's cool to us doesn't mean that > others will even care - even if they should. No truer words were spoken. Just a couple of observations to be taken or left. Larry Cafiero http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Lcafiero -- Fedora-marketing-list mailing list Fedora-marketing-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
