On Wed, 2007-08-08 at 08:10 -0400, James Tremblay wrote:
In sales parlance, a vertical solution is one that covers all the components needed (application set\Hardware set) to perform a business task, i.e. HP has a vertical business solution, it sells: PC's, printers, switches, servers and software. In education a "vertical solution" could be defined as a set of software pieces that encompass all of the tasks an Educator is confronted with daily,
This is the problem. You are looking at it as a technological issue when its a learning issue. An educational vertical solution results in learning, its as simple as that. What matters is the outcome not the process. If you want to narrow it a bit to a vocational education solution you also need some sort of qualification, graduation or certification at the end. The solution will involve software, support for things like social networking, peer assessment virtual learning environments and e-portfolios but also some plain old-fashioned human interaction and celebration. Over-focus on any one component is going to diminish the educational value of the proposition.
i.e. a teacher needs an attendance module, grading module, course management, reference materials management and reporting\assessment module, etc. A school needs a desktop OS, server OS, web applications, e-mail, firewall, etc. With SLE, openSUSE and the EDU-CD we can provide all of the above and more.
But you don't provide the fundamental reason why anyone would not just get those things from Microsoft and the other established suppliers all who have bigger marketing budgets than we do. You are trying to get people to change their technology before they understand why there is a need. Its rather ironic that the value of educating people about why change is needed is lost in providing "educational" solutions which are really technological solutions.
The EDU-CD adds to the standard business solution provided by Novell those tools necessary by compiling the various open source components like : Centre\SIS, Moodle and openbiblio and more onto one OS and makes them easy to install and configure, thus creating a "vertical solution".
A CD is just a dated distribution medium. We provide all those functions mostly from a web site so no need to install anything. We provide government recognised qualifications to provide the incentive to learn why its all useful and to give enhanced employment prospects to those that take it up. Its not dependent on Ubuntu or Suse - actually the fundamentals can be done with Windows because we want to educate die hard windows users not preach to the converted. I can't really see why education professionals would cast off dependency on MS to then lock themselves into a different "integrated" solution simply because it integrated technical components for them. Most educators couldn't care less about the technical components as long as they enable students to learn. When they learn about open FOSS communities and positively opt into them, we know we are making real sustainable progress.
I would like to see programming enhancements to these offerings which make them more compatible with "No Child Left Behind" and those similar standards\requirements across the globe as we move forward.
Well, the world is bigger than the USA so don't get too hooked up on the US education system. The fact is that there are no world standards for most school based learning but it is a good time to start establishing some. They won't be based on ownership of a particular software distro though.
I think that we could entice the programmers involved in the different OSS projects for schools to combine their talents here and make these programs and the EDU-CD a standard for world wide educational environments.
Along with Skolelinux, OpenCD, Extremadura's distro and many others? What you are all doing is producing collections of software that might or might not be useful to schools. This approach has had very limited success in the Microsoft world simply because the great majority of teachers aren't interested in technology, they are interested in motivating kids and getting them graduated and qualified. A lot of that is a human rather than technological challenge.
Think about the promise of an Open Source project that helps educators evaluate the progress of students and the effectiveness of their curriculum as compared to achievements and curricula of other students and schools on an international scale.
Assuming we all place the same cultural values on what effective education means. I think you will find a lot of disagreement on that. We already have a school inspection service and BECTA that serve these functions in the UK. Computers are not at all good at this type of evaluation except in some very narrow fields. What really matters is getting teachers and students learning by contributing to community projects using the principles of free software development to improve education methods. To achieve that we have to embed FOSS principles in the curriculum not try and force new technologies onto people not ready for them.
With Moodle as the core curricula management tool, courses\assignments are internationalized simply by sharing them as modules in the Moodle forum, enhanced locally and returned back to the community in the epitome of open source.
That is closer to what is needed but Moodle is not dependent on Ubuntu or Suse - in fact you can use if from Windows quite happily. How do you incentivise the middle and late adopters to participate? That is a key to getting mass take up. Moodle is popular in schools by comparison to other VLPs but its still only in use in a minority and then often only in specific departments with specific champion teachers.
I believe that great teaching exists all over the world but the ability of the best teachers to effect the largest group of students is stifled by the boundaries of the physical classroom. We, the technical support group of those teachers and school administrators, can and should do everything in our power to tare down those walls as has been done by the technical support groups of the international business world.
Your biggest challenge is to persuade teachers who are mostly not IT specialists why they should spend their time on this when many competing initiatives are being thrown at them from many sides. I'm not trying to discredit your efforts here, I'm just saying the entire FOSS movement has been far too focussed on technological solutions to problems that are inherently about people. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-edu+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-edu+help@opensuse.org