Re: [Fsfe-uk] Education Campaign?

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 10:05:49AM +0100, Marc Eberhard wrote:
> > That's not strictly true - their platform spec calls for Macs to work
> > also, and Netscape 4.
> 
> That's the original information I got and I thus assumed, that mozilla
> should work fine.

Well, as I said, it's kind of flexible :/

> Flash is acceptable as it at least exists for GNU/Linux, obviously not as
> Free Software, but anyway.

I think there is a GPL Flash plugin, but I'm not sure how advanced it is.
Certainly, the latest Flash6 is completely out of our reach, as far as 
I know. This might be something to do with the fact that the 'techie' 
community tends to look down on Flash, but unfortunately Flash is even
more pervasive that Internet Explorer (or, at least, was last time I looked)
making it almost the common denominator.

> a very different opinion, what that term means for me. In any case, is
> anyone aware, if they plan to release their Authorware plugin for GNU/Linux
> too as they've done for Flash?

I would suspect not. It's quite a complex ActiveX control; whereas at least
the Flash plugin was a Netscape plugin. I imagine it relies on the W32
infrastructure fairly heavily. 

> I only stumbled over them, because they appear to have made a really big
> deal with the local libraries here now.

That's interesting. I shall poke someone I know about this; I know people
in the Black Country adult/higher education scene.

> Nevertheless, the person booked on that course was actively encouraged to do
> so by the employer. So even without accreditation, these course appear to be
> popular to at least some companies. Yes, the company pays for the fees.

I think this might be because they are cheaper than most other courses, 
rather than anything else. The quality of the courses does vary enormously.

> > Learn Direct with some learning modules about Free Software to integrate
> > into their system - I'm just not sure what their incentive would be.
> 
> I didn't think that far yet, but the idea is very good. However, at the
> current stage, I would suggest to try to start a constructive dialogue first
> and see, how they react.

Bear in mind that they talk in ??? though. The company that runs it (UfI, 
University for Industry, or something?) is fairly revenue oriented.

I suppose the 'cheap GNU/Linux LearnDirect terminal' concept might have
some mileage though, although perhaps not if it's unable to access
all their courseware (they certainly won't update the courseware for us
or anyone else).

> Yes, that sounds great! I would imagine, that other courses implemented on
> Free Software systems would follow soon, if only the tools were written,
> packaged and easily availabe.

The tools are definitely available already, sans perhaps a decent Flash
editor/plugin system. University of Leeds are doing interesting work with
the "Bodington" (sp) courseware system, IIRC.

> Surely a project worth going for. I'm myself
> very much interested in it as I always wanted to introduce such a component
> into my own modules I teach here at the university. 

Ah, good, a volunteer ;)

> So, to try to get some funding from the EU, I'm more then willing to
> participate. Wasn't there an instrument for universities and SMEs to apply
> for funding for such a project, which is then actually done by the SME -
> getting all the money - with the university as a beneficary of the final
> product? Do you think, your company would be interested in trying something
> like this?

Quite possibly. We definitely have expertise in the area. 

I know there are systems like Socrates/Minerva which are aimed at funding
European projects (Minerva is particularly distance learning/ICT oriented):

        <http://www.socrates-uk.net/minerva/>

.. although they tend not to fund 100% of a project. However, as a community-
oriented project, that might be negotiable.

They also focus on pedagogical input, so it would definitely have to be a 
cross-disciplinary application. I'm sure we could find suitable willing
partners though - you know people at the University, I'm probably two
hops (at most) from any adult learning centre in the West Midlands ;)

The other thing that we might be able to fit into would be the life-long
learning programme. There are two strands here - both providing learning,
and also access to learning. If there was, for example, a free software
learning platform, that might be eligible for some kind of funding under
the access to learning provisions. For example, the idea of a European
Computer Driving Licence based on Free Software would mean that you could
produce courseware (based on OpenOffice.org?) that would be freely copyable,
and anyone could use (... branewave.. based on Knoppix/Freeduc?!) it.
There's obviously the testing/etc. stuff, which would be beyond the scope
of the technology (hence why LearningDirect set up learning centres).

It would be a kind of ultimate 'access' thing to be able to put it all on
one disk and make it freely available. That would be ultracool.

Also, on a slightly different note, there is someone (pipe up, Adam?) who
mentioned being interested in getting Free Software into libraries, so that
people could borrow/etc. copies of Free Software. I'm not how sure of a 
flyer that is given the halflife of software, but combining it with learning
could actually be a very powerful concept.

I also know we've discussed the EUCDL briefly at FSFE-level, and there are
people in other countries (particularly Italy, IIRC) that would pitch in.

Cheers,

Alex.