Project on “Learning the Open Source Way” – Ideas on activities requested

[andreasmeiszner]

A hello to all!

We are currently running a virtual summer university aimed at developing a toolkit on “Learning the Open Source Way” (see http://www.flosscom.net or http://wiki.ubuntu.com/flosscom).

Open source communities are more and more recognised to be also good learning communities / environments that feature several aspects that education could benefit from or is looking for.

So the reason I am posting is that we are currently looking for some open source type activities that could help us in developing this toolkit and stimulate interaction.

At the moment we use a range of environments for this summer university, including Joomla, the wiki (at Ubuntu), Launchpad, recorded flashmeetings and slideshare.

We tried to set up this summer university in an open source manner, means as an open project that can be joined by the different target groups (open source experienced, students, teachers, …).

Any ideas and suggestions would be more than welcome! Also be invited to point out weak points in the case you have a look at our different sites.

Regards
Andreas

[AmyStephen]

Andreas -

How did this effort go over the summer? I would love to hear more about your work. Fascinating stuff!

Thanks for all of your contributions to free software and for getting the word out,
Amy

[andreasmeiszner]

Hi Amy

Thanks for your compliments and interest and keep up the good work with your opensourcecommunity site.
I absolutely agree with your statement that competition should take place at a different level, but not interfere with common values and shared ideals.

To answer your question: the results by now are mixed, and like many other (and much bigger) current initiatives we are still ‘not there yet’.

We had some good feedback and input from Greece open source experienced as Athanasis, Ioannis and Sulayman from the Aristotle University in Greece (and part of the FLOSSCom team) have close links to the local open source community and also through their own students that are partly learning in the ‘real world’ by engaging in open source projects.

However, we could need MUCH MORE input from the open source side. This is especially true for students that could provide us with first hand experiences on open source principles that might add a value to the educational landscape. And I am not talking about the knowledge from core members only, but also from people that just ‘learnt’ how to learn within the open source sphere.

So as it became clear that the limited time of the summer university won’t be sufficient we kept it going as a sub-project of our FLOSSCom project.

I could go more into detail on several aspects but don’t want to steal too much of your time.

And just to have it mentioned: We are still very much interested in any constructive ideas, promotion and contributions ;-)

Cheers
Andreas

[AmyStephen]

I need to spend some time (and find some time!  ) on your site to learn more about what you are doing. This sounds very promising. We need to do a better job of lifting this activity up. I hope to get back in touch with you, soon. Anytime, feel free to email or stop by the blog - or BLOG on the blog! Thanks much for your response! Keep up the good work!

Talk to you later,
Amy

[andreasmeiszner]

Hi Amy

Thank you again for your interest in our current work and hope to hear from you!

Don't hesitate to ask if the information at our different websites are not clear to you - only with those type of feedback we are able to improve it.

Greetings from sunny Porto

Andreas