Free Software Academy

[minddog]

And this as well

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Re: Free Software Academy
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 17:24:07 -0700
From: minddog <minddog@cannibutter.com>
To: Peter Minten <peter.minten@wanadoo.nl>, Gopal V <gopalv82@symonds.net>, 
James Michael DuPont <mdupont777@yahoo.com>, chris@nfluid.com, 
miguel@ximian.com

If I'm not mistaken Peter Minten wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> here's what I cooked up in a few hours about FSA:
>
> -- organization --
>
> Though it's to early to do a large amount of organization planning I highly
> suggest creating a steering committee as highest authority within FSA. The
> SC system worked great in DotGNU (well until about everybody on the SC
> became to busy to actually do something (except Rhys) :-).

So we can learn from that.  I propose a government for our system so that we
can organize through a simple loop with checks and balances.  Let me show you
my view of the organization through a tree structure.

				Freedom Software Academy
_____________/________|____________|_____________\____________________
Students WG      |||	Wake-Up WG      |||   Software WG |||  Standards WG

	   |		   (School Districts,            |				       |
	   |			Gov, Colleges)          |                               |

_______\______________\______________\__________________\___________

		|		       |				|				|_
		|
		|	An organization to teach	| 				|   \Display Formats -
		|	the members of the 		|				|      What, How, Where is available
		|	society of the pros 	Developers willing to 		|     A place to mirror
		|	and cons of		donate time for the cause	|	freeware and
		|	free software.		docs.					|_
		|
		|										|  \Data Formats
		|										|	 What, How, Where is available
		|										|    A place to mirror freeware and docs.
		|
		|_

		  \Active Student leaders that represent

		   | each local chapter's student population.

This is a rough structure of how we can visualize a government of our own.
   _______
  /             \
/_________\

|  Institution |   ----> Doesn't understand Free Software
|_________|		, like's power point and shows

				all its educational material in it.

	  O
	_ |_    ---> Student:
	  / \		 A gnu/linux guru who doesn't use anything
			 but the command line.  He wants to see
		 	 some of his in-class presentations at home.
			 But there are no texinfo, postscript,html, or pdf
			 formats.

His Solution:
		Nag teacher, teacher ignores him.

His Solution with FSA backing:
		Nag teacher, Teacher ignores him, CC the ignored student's with a request
		to have the FSA contact the teacher.   (FSA-fileformat@fsa.gnu.org) or
		online web form /// ???TBD ///

		Teacher learns that what she/he is doing is causing her material in the
		classroom to be partly copyrighted by microsoft...yada yada..educate!!

		Teacher downloads software to easily convert her/his file formats
		to standard ones.  She/he and her students are now very happy!

How can we perform outside interaction without being poured in?  And still be
able to keep 100% problem solving?

We'll have to invent every scenario and have a large FAQ put together.  Then
we can review these and try to invent some type of universal input for
everyone so that we can handle all requests.

> -- time plan --
>
> As decided on the meeting the timeplan of FSA will be divided into
> milestones. While most of the waves are still invisible I can see the
> zeroth and the first one.
>
> We're currently in the zeroth wave. In this wave the focus of FSA is mainly
> getting up and running, I think we can all agree on that statement. This
> wave will last t/m (Dutch for until but including) the chat-a-thon.
>
> It's very important not to end the zeroth wave too soon since we first need
> to get all basic stuff online. In the first wave expansion will be the main
> goal. Expansion will crash FSA however if we aren't prepared for it. The
> idea of putting the chat-a-thon away 2 months therefore seems highly
> recommendable.

I highly second this, but we need to start with some type of PR now!
I have been letting people know about this left and right.  We need a
universal way of educating the student that we are here to help.

> -- declarations --
>
> We will need a number of different declarations and papers, each aimed at a
> specific target group except the first.
>
> The first declaration is the 'declaration of software freedom in schools'
> (if anybody knows a more elegant name please say it).
>
> We also need plain declarations for schools (why free software is good for
> you), for existing student groups (why to join the FSA) and for students
> (why should you care about free software).
>
> I recommend creating a working group to produce these declarations and
> translate them into different languages.

Okay see my tree, see if we can mold this into one of the four i created.
Else we can add a new one and so on.

> -- packages --
>
> The FSA (or more exactly the package working group of the FSA) will produce
> packages. The packages will contain (free and open source) software,
> reasonably complete documentation (tutorial + reference manual) and tips on
> how the software can be used in a learning enviroment.

I think we should take a little more abstract approach and divide up the jobs
to different WG's of the FSA.  Like you set before about a steering
committee, we should develop one from a government system we can design.

> -- teacher assist system --
>
> We should assist teachers in developing courses based on free software. For
> this purpose one or more mailing lists and irc channels should be used. A
> wiki system is also very good for this. Good support will bring satisfied
> schools that won't switch back very fast and that will be positive about
> free software to other schools (peer advertisment is always very
> effective).

Yup already thinking about this.  Wiki is best since not every teacher knows
about irc.  There are those blackboard systems that university's use too.  We
could become a Club that belongs to the blackboard and setup a system there.

Or better yet, our software WG can create a set of plugins to each system a
university would use.

If Blackboard, we'll have a FSA blackboard plugin.
If Wiki, we'll have a FSA wiki plugin/custom version.
and so on...

That's my bit for now, carry on with more ideas!!


regards,
--
--minddog( Adam Ballai )

"I try to take it one day at a time, but several of them attack me at once."
-mistyflip

-------------------------------------------------------

-- 
--minddog( Adam Ballai )

"I try to take it one day at a time, but several of them attack me at once."
-mistyflip