[wsfii-discuss] open education

Wed Nov 2 10:52:17 UTC 2005

Arun - I'm not aware of anything specifically of this kind, but think it
an excellent idea. I know of some relatively unstructured efforts to
support women getting involved in FLOSS, but nothing which would
faciliate people through the process in a more structured way. It would
be pretty easy to do in terms of infrastructure, might be difficult to
assemble a bunch of volunteers to facilitate it tho.

Might also be a good opportunity to address the serious gender-imbalance
in FLOSS development? A lot of women find the current "acolyte system"
difficult and intimidating to access.  It would also make training
available to anyone with access to the internet rather than only people
with resources to meet steep academic fees. 

Paula

Arun Mehta wrote:

> Ultimately, all problems lead us back to the system of education. If
> open systems of all kinds are to take hold, students must not just be
> exposed to them in education, but imbibe the spirit.
>
> I am particularly thinking about software writing, where the assembly
> line approach of conventional education does not work, and qualified
> teachers are hard to find, since industry pays much better. Does there
> exist, or can we build, a method of training people in software
> writing, in which the students are helped to become useful members of
> teams on sites such as sourceforge? They could start small, doing beta
> testing and improving documentation for the user, the code, etc.
> Gradually, they would start writing small bits with help, and get
> better at doing it. Writing FLOSS would form the core of the teaching
> methodology.
>
> Arun
>
>