[Linux-aus] Re: [ALLIES] Re: A Linux for Students project idea

[Janet Hawtin]

Andrew Donnellan wrote:

> I'm already on the Allies and LIAS lists, and unfortunately they seem
> to be quite dead. Linux-aus seems to be the only moderately active
> public list.

There are some folks on allies working on the foss in schools ideas.
Its just tricky posting before you have something real and tangible
happening.

I have a friend who just posted some nice ideas to a local Adelaide
group list, I'll ask him to join allies and to feel free to discuss
thoughts there. (Bruce?)

Donna in Melbourne is also making impressive progress in this area.
Donna has produced a matrix matching the VELS with software which could
help with specific competencies.

For myself I am in the fledgeling stages of two small projects.
Ive started them with a view to having something tangible in Adelaide
for next SFD.

Project1 is SAYwiki, South Australian Yarns.
A public domain content stash about local history.
I am aiming to have a team go around to community centres and groups to
show them how to contribute to wikis. Goal is to build copyright free
content that schools can surf without copyright fees.

Project2 is Polly's story
Its a short story about a girl in a time of saturated copyright.
I am hoping to have it published in wetink which is a new magazine
for Australian and NZ writers, the magazine is based in Adelaide and has
its 2nd issue out nowish.
The postscript to the Creative Commons licensed story is an invitation
to other authors to send me stories or characters licensed creative
commons that I can distribute to schools on paper and cd with howtos
about creative commons licensing, openoffice or abiword.
The idea behind this is to start writers thinking about growing
characters that they can all share and build on and that school kids can
do a play on without costs associated with copyright.
Characters like Death are currently used in cr stories and it would be
nice to have stories about the trad characters which are accessible for
schools.
It would be even nicer to have modern mythologies available which
include good modern characters which can be developed and performed in a
shared way.

Andrew, we arent dead, just being careful about promising before we have
tangible progress, in my case at least.

I feel there is a good crew of people interested in education/foss
the edu-miniconf was lively.

Pia has been taking it direct to schools as a career option roadshow.

I am sure there are others out there.

Keep plugging away and feel free to come and join Bettong at
http://www.googlegroups.com if you want more chat.
If you want to, email me and I'll send you an invite.

We have Kylie doing homeschool work and Teen Challenge, Bruce looking at
UNISA projects for Science in schools, we are more chatty but are still
plugging away slowly and some projects some we are working on are not
directly schools based. Robyn is doing great work training on Linux
desktops in community centres for example.

On the other hand I'll try to post to allies more often =).

Cheers

Janet