Events/EduCamp@FOSDEM2009

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EduCamp is a pre-FOSDEM event for people making the link the learning potential of free and open source development and colleges, universities and higher education. It will include short presentations on existing projects, informal chats and feedback on project ideas, and a chance to network with people trying to do open source edu-stuff. Mozilla will buy lunch.

Event Details

When:

February 6, 2009 Networking begins at 1000am Program will last from 1100am to 430pm

Where:

ibis Brussels Centre Ste Catherine
Rue Joseph Plateau 2
1000 Brussels
Tel : +32 (0) 2 513 76 20
Fax : +32 (0) 2 514 22 14
e-mail: h1454-re1@accor.com
www.ibishotel.com
www.accorhotels.com

(a few hundred meters away from the "Novotel Tour Noire" where the meeting was originally planned)

In planning mode - looking for your input!

email mark -- at -- mozillafoundation.org if your are interested in helping to organize. Sign up below if you want to participate.

What will we talk about?

Contributing to free and open source software projects helps people learn incredibly useful skills: how to code; how to collaborate; how to lead in a global community. Despite this, formal links between higher education and open source projects are rare. College and university students who want to take advantage of the resources and mentorship that come with open source development have to do so on their own time.

It's time to change this. It's time to build systematic links between free and open source software project and the world of higher education. That's what we want to talk about.

Can you give me some examples?

Slowly, a number of projects are emerging to link formal school work with the immersive, participatory learning experience of open source contribution. Some examples are:

  • Seneca College in Toronto works with the Mozilla, Fedora and Open Office communities to provide a real world computer studies laboratory.
  • Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid studies and is starting to offer courses in libre software.
  • Mozilla is in the early stages of experimenting with an education program to encourage more professors and universities
  • OSS Watch are developing a open education curriculum and mentoring programme embedding open source mentoring into computer science and work based learning.
  • Aristotle University - Since the academic year 2005/2006 the 5th semester course ‘Introduction in Software Engineering’ (ISE) at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki – Greece – sends out students to work on open source projects. During the year 2008/2009 Aristotle is piloting, together with the Open University UK, an “open” approach for the ISE course, aimed at bringing together Aristotle students, students from fellow universities, open source practitioners and anyone else interested in SE. The ISE course has app. 160 students per semester and the students are supposed to carry out a project work within an open source project, contributing to this open source project in one out of three ways: 1. to identify (and fix) bugs, 2. to contribute to the code, or 3. to draft / improve the requirement specification documentation. Some further background information are available here.

If you have project or idea that fits this description, write it down above. And consider attending.

Proposed Agenda

This will be a BarCamp-style open space event. People can propose sessions on this wiki, or at the event. The idea is to be very informal and see what happens.

  • 10:00 Networking and free coffee
  • 10:45 Introduction and session proposals
  • 11:00 Sessions programmed by participants
  • 13:00 Lunch and networking
    • Maybe do a round of lightning talks over lunch?
  • 14:30 Sessions programmed by participants
  • 16:30 Reflections and closing
  • 17:00 Find beer and food together

If a really small number of people show up, we'll probably make it shorter ... which just means going to the pub sooner, and continuing conversations there.

We know alot of people aren't coming into Brussels until afternoon. If that's the case, you should feel free to come part way through.

Proposed Sessions

As noted above, we'll make up sessions once we get there, open space style. However, some very likely sessions include:

  • Using a mentor scheme as part of a formal education programme (Ross Gardler)
  • Planning for face-to-face + online course at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid (Gregorio Robles and Pascal Chevrel)
  • Accreditation or reputation: do degrees matter to people who join to open source projects for learning reasons? (Mark Surman)
  • Will an effort to network scattered open source + education projects speed us up or slow us down? (Mark Surman)
  • Open Source Communities, (Higher) Education & Life Long Learning – how to create a triple win solution? (suggested by Rüdiger Glott / Andreas Meiszner)
  • Existing courses on free software in education institutions: European master degree proposals - not only at URJC (suggested by Gregorio Robles)
  • What is the most effective overall strategy for effecting change in universities, broad campaigns or individual pilot schemes? (suggested by Tim Marston)

If you're thinking of running a session, please note it hear so people know what to expect.

Topics I would like to hear about

If you want someone else to cover a topic, post here:

  • existing courses in education instituions
  • scaling existing resources to more institutions
  • creating useful materials for educators

Participants

  • [1] Mark Surman, Mozilla
  • Ross Gardler, OSS Watch
  • Philipp Schmidt, University of Western Cape (?)
  • Leslie Hawthorn, Google Inc.
  • Gregorio Robles, GSyC/LibreSoft, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
  • Felipe Ortega, GSyC/LibreSoft, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
  • Pascal Chevrel, Mozilla
  • Andreas Meiszner, The Open University - UK
  • Ruediger Glott, UNU-Merit
  • Alolita Sharma, Open Source Initiative (OSI)
  • Paul Rouget, Mozilla
  • Delphine Lebédel, Mozilla
  • Tristan Nitot, Mozilla Europe
  • Tim Marston, Red Hat
  • Chris Blizzard, Mozilla
  • Karsten Gerloff, UNU-MERIT
  • [2]Sulayman K. Sowe, UNU-MERIT, Maastricht, The Netherlands
  • Kirsten Haaland, UNU-MERIT

Other

Mainly people attending the FOSDEM, but unfortunaly arriving after the Camp, and willing to meet the Campers, on saturday or whenever possible

Slides

Curriculum Ideas

How do we give a rubber stamp to a curriculum? Who is it aimed at (undergraduate, postgraduate, computer science, MBA etc.)? Is it only universities? What needs to be in an accredited course for it to be of value to employers?

Focus should be what modules are we making available. Allow people to make up their own curriculum or module within a curriculum.


Course Content

Possibly two different levels of accreditation:

"Book Learning" can be enough for the business minds.

Practical experience through mentoring is needed for the programmers.

Book Learning

These are the topics that can be taught via lectures and are suitable

  • Licencing
  • Business models
    • profit making
    • community development
    • Embedded open source in "traditional" business
      • cost reduction
      • non-differentiation
  • High level technical - development methodology 101
    • Quality assurance theory
    • Process
  • Community engagement - why do we need to spen resources on this?
  • Project management and planning
  • Procure or develop (too localised to do in detail but we can provide a high level process)
    • Evaluating projects and communities
  • Open standards
  • Open source as a competitive advantage
  • Applicability to non software projects
Resources
  • Producing OSS
  • Art of Community (if it emerges artofcommunityonline.org) Jono Bacon
  • Open Innovaton
  • Understanding intellectual property in open source
  • Case Studies from, for example
    • Amazon
    • Google
    • PayPal
    • SMEs
    • Consulting
      • Puppet
      • Redmonk
      • Moodle

Mentoring

The following are required

  • Low level technical - programming practice
    • Tools to support process
  • Community management and development
    • Community establishment
  • Inter-project coordination
  • Quality assurance practice

Actions before March 1st

  • Where to plant the flag and how to issue a rally call