[Fcp-general] Free Curriculum Project Status Update

[Peter Hutnick]

Hello,

I'm writing to update everyone on the project and to encourage input and
participation.

I have abandoned the CS text I was working on in favor of "How to Think
Like a Computer Scientist" by  by Allen B. Downey, Jeffrey Elkner and
Chris Meyers.  It is distributed both in electronic and paper formats
under the terms of the FDL by the Green Tea press.  See
http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/ and
http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/ for more information.

I have contacted the authors, who state that the book is being used as a
High School text, and encourage us to use it for the FCP CS text.

I am continuing my work on the Algebra text.  I have received
encouragement and an offer of help off list.  I will post a link to what
I have so far (not much :-(  ) to the list in the next few days.

I have held back from adding either text to CVS as we don't have a
structure for the CVS repository laid out yet.  I'm not an expert on
CVS, and I'm hoping someone on the list can suggest how to set it up in
a way that we won't regret later.

Another reason that I hesitate is that we haven't nailed down any
document formatting rules yet.  I'm soliciting comments from all of you.
 I am open to all suggestions, as long as they stick to open formats and
Free tools.  We need something that will work well on screen as well as
print.  LaTeX "source" with HTML, PDF, and PostScript->paper output
seems like the obvious solution to me, but this puts a lot of technical
demand on the author.

We also ought to contact the Project Gutenberg folks about the
possibility of redistributing some of their texts under the terms of the
FDL.  Any volunteers?

I contacted an outfit called McREL (http://www.mcrel.org/) about using
some of their materials.  They were unwilling to provide them under the
terms of the FDL.  I may have been unable to adequately explain the
difference between this and releasing their works into the public
domain.  If anyone happens to have a contact at this organization your
help would be greatly appreciated.

I suppose that another task at hand is developing a list of possible
resources.  Here's a start:

- Non-profit orgs with compatible goals (such as McREL).

- Public schools.  This one is complex.  Most, as I understand it, get
all of their materials from private suppliers.  I have to imagine that
some, at least, develop their own curriculum in-house.  Since this is
done with public funds it seems that we might be able to obtain
non-exclusive use.

- Private schools.  This may be counter-intuitive, but private schools
may have more leeway to work with us.  Parochial schools are prime
candidates.

- Sources of public domain works.  Gutenberg, libraries, etc.

- Private individuals.  Notably parents who home school.

Finally, I'd like to ask everyone to introduce yourself.  Let us know a
little about your background, why you are interested in the FCP, what
you hope to get from the FCP, what you are willing to do for the FCP,
what your talents are, etc.  I am particularly interested to hear what,
if any, knowledge or involvement you've had with Free (and/or Open
Source) Software.

I would genuinely like to hear from each and every one of you.

Thank you.

-Peter