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What does it take to build a community?

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

I spent today down in London with some great educators and those involved in the Open Source community. We were part of an advisory group for a Becta-funded project allied to the website opensourceschools.org.uk. Part of the discussion naturally focused on starting a community of educators interested in using Open Source Software (OSS) in their schools. The question we were tasked with was: how do we get started?

AlphaPlus, the consultancy firm employed by Becta to run the project haven’t had a great deal of experience in Open Source, although they’ve done a decent job so far. What was great was that there were some ‘big hitters’ there to get things moving along. At the meeting, apart from myself, were:

In the morning session we discussed who we were aiming the website at. It was agreed that there already exist some excellent ‘technical’ website for network administrators and the like, but that more was needed for ‘beginners’ and those new to OSS. At the moment, opensourceschools.org.uk is a framework to build the community upon. We were concerned with how to go from eager early adopters using the site to gaining mainstream traction.

The key question of a previous blog post of mine (Why as an educator you should care about Open Source Software) was used as a stimulus to discussion. The point was raised that actually we need to move one step back: why should teachers even care about software? From there we discussed recent Becta license agreements after which Josie mentioned that at present students are taught how to use specific software (usually Microsoft) instead of more generic skills.

Michelle shared with the group the policy at her school of giving Year 7 students a USB flash drive containing all the software they will need during their time at the school. It is all Open Source and the school computers all run Linux. As a result, teachers can be confident that students have access to the software they need at home as well as school. A representative from Becta built on this, talking about the complex license agreements for some companies mean dealing with OSS is a lot easier for schools.

This got me thinking: wouldn’t it be great if the (eventual) community at opensourceschools.org.uk could discuss and agree on customised versions of the OSS available at portableapps.com? For example, a version of Firefox with useful plugins for students pre-installed, or OpenOffice with everything set up in a way students and teachers alike would find intuitive.

Josie then took over to do some scenario planning for the community we are planning to attract and build on the site. She asked us to split into groups and come up with two axes on a graph in order to think about the type of community we want to foster. our group wanted to steer a course between a place that was almost unbearingly positive and back-slapping and a forum that involved lots of flamewars. On the other axis we put ‘enablers’ and ‘reticent’. Obviously, there’s no point in ‘preaching to the choir’ and just setting out to attract those who already know and use OSS. Whilst those people are needed, we need to focus on those who are at present disinterested and do some evangelism. Other groups talked about having specific roles in the community and whether the site should operate largely as a repository or a community.

After lunch, we had more of a freeform discussion about the website and how we could go about building the community. Many agreed that whilst Drupal is a good example of Open Source Software, it perhaps isn’t best for the purpose in mind. One of the AlphaPlus team mentioned that they’d planned to have ‘roadshows’ in order to do some form of evangelism. I suggested that they may want to run some ‘unconference’ sessions in a spirit similar to that of TeachMeet. The short presentations could be filmed and form a set of rich-media case studies to go on the site. More importantly, however, people would be able to meet face-to-face and share advice and ideas.

The best bit of the day, for me, was meeting in person people I had only previously met online. It’s great to spend time with like-minded, positive people who care deeply about education. 😀

Check out opensourceschools.org.uk. What would YOU suggest? Are you interested in using OSS in education?

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How to find and download YouTube videos for use in the classroom

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

Our school network, like most in the UK, blocks the video-sharing site YouTube. Whilst this is understandable from an Internet safety point of view, there are many wonderful resources that educators could be missing out on.

There are many ways to download videos from YouTube, one of the easiest being to use a website such as Zamzar. The following screencast demonstrates how to do this. It is hosted at Edublogs.tv, so should remain unblocked by most school networks! 🙂

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var so = new SWFObject(“http://www.edublogs.tv/flvplayer.swf”,”mpl”,”450″,”355″,”8″);so.addParam(“allowscriptaccess”,”always”);so.addParam(“allowfullscreen”,”true”);so.addVariable(“height”,”355″);so.addVariable(“width”,”450″);so.addVariable(“file”,”http://www.edublogs.tv/uploads/c0xqezbBMbZqGckHshmh.flv”);so.addVariable(“searchbar”,”false”);so.write(“player”);

Direct link to screencast

If, for some reason, Zamzar fails to work, the following websites do the job in a similar way:

Most of these converters support more than just YouTube – so try them with other video-sharing websites! 😀

***UPDATE*** A colleague suggested that a handout might make things easier than trying to follow an online video. I’ve put one together that you can download below:

How to find and download YouTube videos for use in the classroom (4.9MB)

 

I need YOUR help with the future of edte.ch

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

I’m done with edte.ch as a business. I’d post a video of me setting my business cards on fire if it wasn’t for the fact I’m going to recycle them! Why is edte.ch as a consultancy dead? Answer: my role next year has pushed me into the area previously only available to me as a sideline. Hence, I recently blew up the site. :-p

So, what to do with the great domain name? I’ve a couple of ideas which I’d like to bring together on the new site. They both involve creating places for discussion for distinct groups of people who, at present – as far as I’m aware – don’t have a forum for debate/help/guidance:

  • Ed.D. students interested in educational technology.
  • The role known variously as E-Learning Tutor, Instructional Technologist, E-Learning Director, etc. that’s becoming increasingly common in schools around the world.

Over the last few months I’ve had a substantial number of representatives from each group contact me for advice, guidance and requests for resource/idea-sharing. I want to provide that forum for discussion and debate,* but I need the help of the community in two ways:

  1. I want to use some type of software to get this sorted out. I tried KickApps, but didn’t like the advertising. Despite several attempts, I’m clueless with Drupal, so was going to try Joomla. I’d really welcome suggestions and recommendations – especially of those found at OpenSourceCMS.com
  2. I’m going to need some co-administrators/moderators for the new site. Anyone up for that?

Please do let me know in the comments if you’ve any ideas or want to take part! 😀

* Let me re-iterate that edte.ch as a business has ceased to exist. The only thing I will ‘own’ on this website is the domain name. Let’s face it – someone has to! The content will be Creative Commons-licensed.

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