Re: [Fsfe-uk] education

[Richard Smedley]

MJ Ray wrote:
> 
> Richard Smedley <address@hidden> wrote:
> > The wider question is affs's rôle in promoting Free Software in education.
> > What do we think we can offer?
> 
> Here are some ideas from me:
> 
>  1. Education (hoho), explaining why the freedoms are important to
> educational establishments.  Stress the value of having code to study for
> HE, and the ability to change supplier or pay for chosen further specific
> development for education in general.

Probably our most important rôle, atm.
But whom are we goimg to educate.

Obvious targets are DfEE, becta, Nesta et al.
(as well as the educational press).
In doing this we should be looking to make alliamces with 
those already involved (eg Red Hat have been mentioned).

Studying code may be important at a later age, but we
also need to go armed with arguments for primary
schools, where they may not worry about access to source :-)
The vendor lock-in argument is important here, but half of all
British schools are locked into a single vendor, anyway: RM

 
>  2. Promotion, both to highlight available software and suppliers to
> education, and to highlight projects needing work to developers.  A sort of
> educational software matchmaking service. 


Schoolforge have done a lot of work on this, but it has an 
American bias, and OSiE made a start a year ago. 

A well-maintained website, listing all the apps schools could 
ever need, would also be a great resource for advocates of 
Free Software in Education :-)



> Maybe we could award some sort of
> service mark to suppliers who we feel can be trusted to deploy Free Software
> properly?

It may be a lot of work to set up, but this could
be done with ISVs in areas other than education
as well



> 
>  3. (later) money, using some of the revenue to fund targeted localisation
> work, probably as seed capital to attract other funding... OK, that's
> probably still controversial.

Controversial is OK - debate is good :-)
However, it seems quite a rasonable use of 
membership money to me, ie promoting the
cause of Free Software.




> 
> Feel free to tear them apart.

Wouldn't that distract you from your flame wars on
other lists 8-P

- Richard


-- 

Richard Smedley
Production Editor, Linux Format

Telephone +44 (0) 1225 442244 ext 5038