[education-wg] Listserv Organizatoin

[Mike]

Hello. This is Mike Huffman. In order to provide better organization for 
this list I would like to make some recommendations.

I am going to suggest some organization for the list in order to enhance 
output. I think this makes sense based on what we need to accomplish. 
I'm going to briefly describe the workgroups in the following message 
and I hope that it generates comments from people in the group. Besides 
adding some organization the list I am also hopeful this will promote 
flexibility and will provide us an avenue for outputs that make sense 
for the overall goal.

Obviously the first goal is to finalize the descriptions of each of 
these following working groups. The descriptions I've included here are 
very sketchy. Within the first week we should work on finalizing these 
descriptions so that each workgroup has a specific goal in a specific 
work product. Hopefully this will kick off some thought and feedback 
from each of you. They're a total of four working groups and they are 
outlined below:

*Publications*

I would like to suggest a working group within the list to work on 
publications that may be helpful in promoting and using open source 
software. These publications may be ones, for example, that Greg 
suggested regarding money sources for open source projects, and may also 
include basic strategies that schools can use in implementing open 
source efforts. Hopefully this subgroup will be skilled at writing and 
be willing to allow everyone to respond and critique their efforts. We 
can decide later if attribution is allowed, but in any case the 
copyright needs to be open.

*Technical Roadmap
*

Another working group of the list be responsible for reviewing technical 
roadmap issues. This would include interoperability issues, data issues 
for schools,And other issues such as data reporting for determining 
success.  This workgroup will also be responsible for responding to 
technical reviews and endorsements of efforts as they are requested.

*Strategies*

The driving working group will be the strategies workgroup. This group 
will be responsible for identifying strategies that can work with open 
source software as well as prioritizing how this gets put together. Most 
of the strategy discussions will be public on the listserv and 
everyone's input will be required. However a smaller group will refine 
the focus and determine which strategies need to be addressed first.

The strategies group will include discussions regarding open textbooks 
and open content. In addition to identifying a listing open content to 
make available to the public this group will also identify areas in 
which open content is needed and help in identifying individuals who can 
help provide that content.

*Student Involvement*

A final group will be will include students and active K-12 
representatives. It is critical that we bring interested youth into this 
forum. Teachers who are currently active in K-12 will also be welcomed. 
This group will not only serve as a sounding board for all of the other 
workgroups, it will provide a real-world link that will allow us to 
approach the task before us in a realistic manner.

_Membership in the workgroups_

I think that it's realistic that people may serve in more than one 
workgroup if they so desire. It is essential however that we identify 
necessary outputs in each of the workgroups. In the beginning phase I 
will be happy to coordinate workgroup membership and active involvement. 
Workgroup's will select leaders who will be responsible for being the 
contact point and reports will be sent out to individual groups as they 
are completed. When a report is ready for general posting it will be 
reviewed by all list members and then posted on the website.

Any thoughts? Does this seem like a reasonable approach to help us to 
make the progress needed? Logistically is it possible for this to work? 
Do you have suggestions for improvement?

-- 
*Mike Huffman* mhuffman at comcast.net
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