[Linux-aus] [Osia-discuss] Re: Open Letter to the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia

[Zachary Zeus]

Sridhar,

If we are to adopt your proposals, who has to agree, and what are the next steps?  I'm keen to participate.

Zach

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Wilson" <kenwilso at ozemail.com.au>
To: "Sridhar Dhanapalan" <sridhar at dhanapalan.com>
Cc: "Donna Benjamin" <donna at cc.com.au>, "Linux Australia Mailing List" <linux-aus at linux.org.au>, "Open Source Industry Australia" <osia-discuss at lists.osia.net.au>, edu-sig at luv.asn.au, "Australian Linux Lobby In Edu Sector" <allies at lists.linux.org.au>, "Linux in Australian Schools" <lias at lists.linux.org.au>
Sent: Sunday, 6 July 2008 09:16:01 AM (GMT+1000) Australia/Sydney
Subject: Re: [Osia-discuss] Re: [Linux-aus] Open Letter to the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia

well put
Ken

Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Jul 2008 at 16:55, Donna Benjamin <donna at cc.com.au> wrote:
>> This was just sent to the Deputy PM, Treasurer, Minister for finance and
>> Senator Kate Lundy and was also CC'd to senior members of the Digital
>> Education Revolution taskforce.
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Open Letter to Deputy Prime Minister calling for consideration of Free
>> and Open Source Software in implementation of the Digital Education
>> Revolution Policy for the National Secondary School Computer Fund.
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Great work, Donna!
> 
> (I'm a signatory but Donna deserves much of the credit)
> 
> So the question arises: what next? We should have a plan to follow this up, or 
> else the momentum will be lost.
> 
> My suggestion is for us to build a Web site focused on open education in 
> Australia. We already have the perfect vehicle: http://openeducation.org.au. 
> However, at present it's just a messy wiki more suitable for our own 
> brainstorming than for being a public-facing resource.
> 
> The wiki should of course remain, but I propose that we build a proper, 
> presentable Web site that is directly accessible via the 
> http://openeducation.org.au address.
> 
> Why do this when we already have http://linux.org.au/education? Open Education 
> is much bigger than Linux, and certainly should not be anchored to it. Here's 
> a short list of what it can include:
> 
> * FOSS
> * (GNU/)Linux OS - on servers
> * (GNU/)Linux OS - on clients/desktops
> * open standards
> * open languages/libraries/APIs
> * free content/culture
> * open learning
> * open curriculum
> 
> To be honest, I fear that we might be only hurting ourselves by tying open 
> education to a completely Free computing environment. That might be a worthy 
> aim, but few institutions are going to switch over all in one go. By offering 
> a migration path (or paths), a school can migrate more comfortably at its own 
> pace. We ought to be providing real choice, not just a binary 'with us or 
> with the terrists'.
> 
> FOSS (Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Scribus, etc.) can run on operating systems 
> other than Linux. To use the recent Education Expo as an example, we got a 
> lot of buy-in through the OpenEducationDisc, a compilation of FOSS for 
> Windows.
> 
> Also note how I split Linux clients from servers. Linux's place in the server 
> realm is very solid, but convincing an institution to accept a Linux client 
> solution is tougher. And by 'client', I mean either traditional desktops or 
> thin clients. The latter are often cost-effective and represent a real 
> strength of Linux, but are often overlooked or even have regulations working 
> against their adoption. On the server side, we have some great educational 
> tools such as Moodle and LAMS.
> 
> Open standards obviously include things like file formats and protocols, which 
> will become even more relevant as we see more applications (proprietary or 
> otherwise) pick up standardised methods of information exchange such as ODF 
> and PDF. This should also ease the integration of FOSS into pre-existing 
> environments. It also can include languages and all things related. Why are 
> schools still teaching Visual Basic when they could be teaching Python?
> 
> The final three points all link together. Most notably, they are not dependent 
> upon technology at all. Your average teacher isn't a technologist, and 
> shouldn't have to be. Knowledge can be shared and organised openly just like 
> code. Wikipedia has proven that great things can be built if ordinary people 
> are given easy to use tools.
> 
> Where to from this point? I suggest that we work towards getting a CMS running 
> at openeducation.org.au. We'll have to agree upon a design and the message 
> that we want to purvey. Content creation should be separate from technical 
> ability, so the CMS should be simple enough for anybody to contribute.
> 
> Here is some inspiration from the UK:
> 
>   http://www.openschoolsalliance.org/
>   http://schoolforge.org.uk/
> 
> The UK education sector appears to be much further ahead of us in terms of 
> embracing openness, and I think we can take some lessons from their efforts.
> 
> 
> Sridhar
> 
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