MESSAGE
| DATE | 2002-01-10 |
| FROM | Ron Guerin
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] SCHOOLFORGE COALITION FORMED TO ADVANCE OPEN RESOURCES IN EDUCATION
|
Schoolforge Press Release (January 8th 2002)
SCHOOLFORGE COALITION FORMED TO ADVANCE OPEN RESOURCES IN EDUCATION
THE INTERNET, January 8, 2002 -- Schoolforge, a global coalition of
online groups dedicated to promoting open resources in education,
announced its formation today. The online project is located at
http://www.schoolforge.net.
In November of 2001, members of the online groups SEUL/edu
(http://www.seul.org/edu), Open Source Schools
(http://www.opensourceschools.org), the K-12 Linux in Schools project
(http://www.k12os.org), and the Open Source Educational Foundation
(http://www.osef.org) decided to develop a central organization to
provide help for educators seeking the advantages of open resources and
open source/free software. Composed of more than 30
open-resource-focused educational organizations on five continents, the
all-volunteer Schoolforge project hopes to harness the collective
strengths of educators by enabling them to share technical and
pedagogical expertise far beyond their localities.
"For too long," said SEUL/edu leader and Schoolforge spokesman Doug
Loss, "our many projects suffered from isolation and low visibility. Our
lack of a unified organization often meant that our efforts as educators
and as technologists were duplicative. Isolated, we could neither build
on our colleagues' successes, nor learn from their failures."
Schoolforge is intended to help its member organizations to:
* introduce open resources, including free/open source software, to
primary and secondary educational settings;
* help educators use and develop open resources, including free
curricula and free software;
* foster local and global volunteer support networks to implement
free/open source educational solutions; and
* provide open forums for educators to share information with
colleagues, and with corporate and governmental educational
stakeholders.
Schoolforge member organizations are made of volunteers, teachers and
technologists in elementary and high schools around the world who are
committed to harnessing the Internet and open resources to help teachers
teach and help students learn. Contributions to open resource projects
are free and open to anyone who desires to use them, and can never be
withdrawn from public use.
Schoolforge's member groups are delivering the power of open resources
to primary and secondary educators. While some SchoolForge groups are
focused on bringing open source and free software resources to schools
in need of low- or zero-cost alternatives to proprietary software, other
member organizations have broader goals: "When we use the term 'open
resources,' we mean a lot more than free software," said David Bucknell,
Open Source Schools Project head and Schoolforge co-spokesman. "Open
resources are educational tools made by educators, for educators,
sharing the experience they've gained in both the classroom and the lab.
That can include everything from folk wisdom to lesson plans, and from
software to documentation."
Visitors to Schoolforge will find links to SEUL/edu's successful case
studies from around the world (http://richtech.ca/seul/casedex.html ),
and Open Source Schools' how-tos, reviews, and informative essays
(http://opensourceschools.org). Links are also provided to projects
dedicated to free and open source educational and administrative
software (http://richtech.ca/seul/), and free curriculum and free
science instructional texts (http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/). A list of all
current members, and information for organizations interested in
joining, can be found at http://www.schoolforge.net/memb ership.php.
"We're hoping to put behind us the day when computers were used to teach
students how to use branded computer products, and to lock hapless
school districts into a never-ending treadmill of hardware and software
spending," Loss said. "We don't want another teacher ever to have to
learn a proprietary interface, only to have his or her experience
rendered useless with the next product upgrade or business failure. Open
resources promise to make technology a powerful tool for education, not
the other way around."
CONTACTS:
Doug Loss
dloss-at-seul.org
(570) 326-3987 (US)
or
David Bucknell
david-at-iteachnet.org
66-2 583-5874 (Thailand)
US Fax: 775-244-0803
or
Harry McGregor
schoolforge-at-osef.org.
(520) 661-7875 (US)
____________________________
New Yorker Linux Users Scene
Fair Use -
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