Re: [Fsfe-uk] Education Campaign?

[Marc Eberhard]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 10:53:31AM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> > 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.

Please keep us/me informed!

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

OK.

> 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).

OK. We should still try to raise awareness. Maybe they are willing to amend
their specs at least for future courses (newly developed ones). If we can
convince them, that they're loosing or at least missing out on potential
customers, that might help too.

> 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.

Do you happen to have a collection of URLs at hand?

> > 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 ;)

Terms and conditions apply. Written details are _not_ available on request. :-)

But serious: Time is the main issue on my side.

> > So, to try to get some funding from the EU, I'm more then willing to

> 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):

I believe, there is also something in FP6. Georg could potentially know more
details. Do you want to look into this?

> 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

Shouldn't be a problem, I agree.

> 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
[...]

Wow, a flood of ideas! Anyone else wants to get involved too? As the traffic
on this list is quite low, I suggest we follow that up here. That really
sounds like a direction worth going into.

> 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.

That might help to attract EU funding, especially within FP6.

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 12:34:30PM +0100, Richard Smedley wrote:
> Indeed. Yes, it all went very quiet. At the moment
> we need volunteers with time, knowledge and contacts 
> to get involved (hint, hint :-)

Hmmm... maybe we shouldn't ask our members for a fee, but instead for a
donation of a few hours. What do you need exactly?

> http://www.linuxuserexpo.com/
> 24-26 June, NEC, Birmingham,UK

Ah, I assume this is finally public now. So as a side note, we won't be able
to hold the AGM there at that date. We're still looking for alternatives...

Bye,
Marc
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