[Scale-planning] Open Source in Education Track (was Re: About the Open Data Track)

Tue Aug 2 08:30:57 UTC 2016

(FYI: Bala is traveling this week, so he might be delayed in replying to
this with his feedback on numbers and experience the past few years.  I
imagine he'll reply in a few days when he's back)

Happy to see Caryl and Kennth both excited about keeping the OSSIE track
alive. If those interested in OSSIE want to come back with a proposal on
what the track should look like moving forward and how best to fill the
both the program and the seats in the room I'm sure we could get behind
having it again.

I do like the the idea of finding a way to offer continuing education
credits for teachers, as that would likely draw them in similar to how
we've done this for the legal track.

For context/background, the original mission of OSSIE was to help Educators
find ways to use OpenSource in the classroom, specifically in K-12
environments but occasionally we covered high education.  This was from
around the time all the CA schools had vouchers for use in purchasing tech
as part of the Microsoft Law suits, while at the same time having reduced
budgets due to cuts.  Our vision at the time had been to send teachers back
to school with lesson plans they could use in their class rooms as a way to
drive free software use in schools, and get students involved early.

In terms of specific numbers:

* OSSIE has always been a 1 day track. Depending on the year the day has
varied between either Friday, or the weekend days.

* Attendees.  I'd need to dig  to find specific number of attendees the
past few years. Shyam or Bala who are on list might have it handy.  I think
a reasonable goal would be to have 30-40 attendees in the track.  Our
smallest room is 60~ theater style, most rooms hold 150+ theater style.

* # of submissions by year:

2016 - 4
2015 - 4
2014 - 7
2013 - 3

Some initial questions I can think of for us to discuss are:

* Where does OSSIE fit with regards to SCALE TNG? They're likely
complimentary and can support each other in someway.

* Is our goal to reach educators, students, parents or some combination
there of?

* What day is best for each of the mentioned audiences? (teachers vs
parents vs students)

* If we want educators, how can we better reach them and encourage them to
attend? Happy to share what we've done in the past.

Ilan Rabinovitch
Conference Chair
Southern California Linux Expo
877-831-2569 x110 Voice
818-442-1865 Mobile
ilan at linuxfests.org Email

---
Ask me about sponsorship and speaking opportunities at LinuxFests.org's
upcoming events:
DevOps Days SV -  June 24-25, 2016 - Mountain View, CA
Texas Linux Fest - July 8-9, 2016, Austin TX
SCALE 15x - March 2-5, 2017 - Pasadena, CA

On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 9:40 PM, Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Ilan,
>
> Why don't you let Kenneth Wyrick and I see if we can get this going? You
> have given us a list of things to work on below and we can get started
> right away with such things as whether Friday or Saturday would work best
> and how to get more educators to attend.* As I see it, an OSSIE track
> shouldn't be just for educators. With so many parents getting involved in
> the technology side of their children's education, things like the Khan
> Academy videos, Hour of Code and Scratch/ScratchJr are things that will
> have a wider audience than just professional educators.
>
> Caryl
>
> * Maybe we could get  a unit of college credit for folks who attend the
> entire OSSIE day and pay a small fee. Teachers can use this type of credit
> for professional development and, often, it can count toward increases in
> salary.
>
> ------------------------------
> From: ilan at socallinuxexpo.org
> Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2016 14:45:05 -0700
> To: scale-planning at lists.linuxfests.org; bala at socallinuxexpo.org
> Subject: [Scale-planning] Open Source in Education Track (was Re: About
> the Open Data Track)
>
>
> We haven't yet made a decision around OSSIE for this year, but as a track
> it has seen reduced attendance and submissions over the past few years. If
> we can come up with some concrete plans around what we'd want it to look
> like and discuss how we can get teachers to attend I'm sure we'd be happy
> to arrange space again.
>
> Another thing to keep in mind is we've gotten mixed feedback from teachers
> on what day to hold OSSIE on if we continue to do so. On the one hand we
> hear from many teachers they can't attend during the weekend as they have
> trouble getting the school district to give them a day off for the
> conference.  On the other hand, we also hear from them that they prefer to
> keep their weekends to themselves rather than for training.
>
>
>
> -Ilan
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linuxfests.org/pipermail/scale-planning/attachments/20160802/a575b3e2/attachment.html>