Mailing List for K-12 Open Source Questions

[David Trask]

The "user" Steve refers to is a lady....kindergarten teacher I
think....who attended NELS last week as part of a team from her school. 
They are "ready".  The problem that often happens when folks like her are
"ready" is that we as a geek community have a tendency to say
"yeah....whatever...and then ignore them".  We saw the power of the
classroom teacher "track" at NELS this year.  It was by far the most
popular track we had....the sessions were full.  This is encouraging and
at the same time a little scary....we need to be ready to support these
teachers in any way we can.  In my experience, once we get to a certain
point and the teacher community develops....they will eventually be a
sef-sustaining community.  Once that happens....we will be on our way  :-)
 They are a very powerful group....I can say this as I am part of both. 
I'm excited....things feel like they are on the cusp of something big.  

I can see our role at this point as being mediators and information
gatherers.  I see questions like "Does anyone have any templates for 3rd
graders for writing stories?"  Our job would be to help point folks to one
another....or perhaps work with the greater community to develop the
templates....etc.  One piece of software that many elementary teachers
have been asking about is a clone of Easybook
(http://store.sunburst.com/ProductInfo.aspx?itemid=176605#complete). 
Seems like tuxpaint might be able to be modified to do something like
this.   Make pages....create story backgrounds....images....etc....to
publish a short book written by a kid in the  lower grades.  Perhaps Bill
Kendrick might be able to take a crack at it.  The teachers at NELS loved
TuxPaint!

Fedora Education Initiative <fedora-education-list at redhat.com> on Monday,
June 26, 2006 at 3:16 PM +0000 wrote:
>
>On Mon, 26 Jun 2006, Steve Hargadon wrote:
>
>> On 6/26/06, Warren Togami <wtogami at redhat.com> wrote:
>> > Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
>> > In my experience, the less technical educators are more likely to be
>> > overwhelmed and annoyed by mailing lists as a communication and
>support
>> > medium.  These type of users are less likely able to setup automatic
>> > filters to throw lists into folders before they are even read.
>> 
>> I think that may be the case, but I also think that there are issues
>> that aren't easy to bring up on the technical lists that are real and
>> would be benefitted by a list:  lesson plans, programs that other
>> teachers like, etc.
>
>Yeah.  The "lesson plan" thing is something I see over and over.
>
>So let me ask a couple of questions:
>
>1. Does *anyone* you know have any lesson plans that involve the use of 
>FLOSS software?
>
>2. If so, how are they made available?
>
>--g
>
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David N. Trask
Technology Teacher/Director
Vassalboro Community School
dtrask at vcsvikings.org
(207)923-3100