Follow-up on NPSTAC Meeting

[Caleb Marcus]

Heh, didn't notice Martin's earlier reply.
On Thu, 2008-02-28 at 15:03 -0500, Caleb Marcus wrote:

> I know Martin... we're in the Ubuntu MA team.
> 
> 
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 12:34 AM, Britt-Webb, Erik
> <ebrittwebb at concoursgroup.com> wrote:
> 
>         Martin,
>         
>         Thanks for sharing this.  Let me take a little longer to
>         digest and
>         reply.  Do you mind if I share some or all of this with the
>         School
>         Portal team?
>         
>         BTW...Do you know Caleb Marcus?  I just recently connected
>         with him via
>         the NPSTAC.org site, and he says he's involved with Ubuntu as
>         well.
>         He's a student at Newton South HS.
>         
>         Erik
>         
>         
>         
>         -----Original Message-----
>         From: Martin Owens [mailto:doctormo at gmail.com]
>         Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 3:06 PM
>         To: Britt-Webb, Erik
>         Cc: Danny.Piccirillo at gmail.com; janet at janetporcaro.net; Ubuntu
>         MA
>         Subject: Re: Follow-up on NPSTAC Meeting
>         
>         Dear Mr Britt-Webb,
>         
>         It was very interesting being in one of your meetings and
>         seeing what
>         kinds of considerations and organisational challenges your
>         facing.
>         
>         I do have a couple of observations from my perspective:
>         
>         The view on Free and Open Source software isn't really
>         solidified in
>         members; in the portal project people considered it like is
>         was a magic
>         vendor who gives no support for products but doesn't charge
>         any money.
>         This view can be quite disingenuous to what FOSS really is
>         about, a mode
>         of production though sharing of information and work isn't
>         really a
>         vendor. Any organisation could make good use of any software
>         available
>         in the FOSS world by either in house expertise, private out
>         sourcing or
>         building and working with a community (more on
>         that)
>         It may be worth Ubuntu-MA offering to do a short presentation
>         explaining
>         what Free Software is, what Open Source is, what the benifits
>         of being
>         free are and why organisations should be demanding these
>         freedoms from
>         their traditional suppliers. We think using examples in the
>         FOSS world
>         would be useful too.
>         
>         I didn't see any thought in the portal group of looking into
>         setting up
>         a community project, what you have in one instance is a
>         package 'Moodle'
>         or 'DrupleEd' which does interesting things but because of
>         it's none
>         vendor status may require setting up and further maintenance.
>         If the
>         initial set up and ongoing maintenance tasks are difficult
>         enough then
>         looking towards including a large group of school districts
>         just for
>         this one project would be more efficient.
>         Each has technical teams which would work towards getting
>         their own
>         setup packaged in a useful way for deployment and sustainable
>         management, but all code and information would be in a central
>         place
>         that other teams would use and collaborate. I find it hard to
>         believe
>         that other schools have such different needs to make this
>         infeasible.
>         
>         I was also interested since my wife works for Harvard Divinity
>         in their
>         tech department looking after their internal portal project
>         and dealing
>         with teacher training, conflicting portal products,
>         conflicting schools
>         using different systems and different back ends and other
>         complex
>         organisational problems. Even though HDS is a different level
>         the
>         problems seemed to be the same.
>         
>         Thanks again for letting us join your group last night. And do
>         let us
>         know if you have questions or would like us to do events and
>         things.
>         
>         Best Regards, Martin Owens
>         
>         2008/2/27 Britt-Webb, Erik <ebrittwebb at concoursgroup.com>:
>         >
>         >
>         > Danny and Martin,
>         >
>         > Thanks so much for coming out to the NPS TAC meeting last
>         night.  Did
>         > you find your participation in either the 1-1 Learning or
>         the School
>         > Portal projects useful?  While they both have technical
>         aspects to
>         > them, I'm curious to hear if you think there are any useful
>         > connections at this point to what we're doing.
>         >
>         > Do you want to continue your participation in any way?
>         >
>         > Thanks again for making the effort to come out.  It was nice
>         to meet
>         > both of you.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > Erik Britt-Webb
>         > 617-916-5320 home office
>         > 617-899-6023 mobile
>         >
>         > erik at britt-webb.net
>         > ebrittwebb (Skype, AIM, Y!IM)
>         > www.britt-webb.net/erik
>         >
>         
>         --
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>         
> 
> 
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