Curriculum development meeting

Yesterday evening, I attended a meeting on curriculum development, part of the School LUG's mission to get children at schools using computers. Some computers have been donated, and the labs have been set up by volunteers, and the computers are running Linux. Teachers and techies got together to plan an open-content curriculum using open source software to go with the labs. I took some minutes, which I've attached.

From: Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org>
Subject: [slug-chat] Notes from Curriculum meeting
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 22:30:52 +0200

Hey,

Here's what I wrote down:

Two main streams were identified: Content and Software.

Under content, computer(/IT) literacy goals need to be identified on our
own (grades 1 - 10), and the eight major learning areas will need to be
worked with to assist each other to match computer/IT literacy and the
learning areas.

In software, existing software available on the platform needs to be
investigated, as well as existing software for use on the platform or as
a source for ideas, and eventually changes will be developed to existing
software to improve certain outcomes, or new software will be developed
to achieve something not available.

First todo item - write down and agree on our goals.

Three weeks have been allocated to the evaluation of software, whether
for Linux or Windows.  Software should be evaluated to these criteria:

Educational content
Audience - Age group, &c.
Usability/Interface
Interactiveness
Assessment/Feedback provision
Ease of installation
Usability for groups - two learners may be common

Places to find software include:

http://seul.org/edu/
http://freshmeat.net/
http://sourceforge.net/
...

Particapants should evaluate software as they are able to; those with
access to learners are encouraged to get them to critique the software.
However, if Windows PC at home is the only platform, the assessments are
still useful to find out what would go into an open source alternative
on Linux.  Some assistance for those without Internet connectivity is
requested.

After three weeks, a CD with selected software will be created, and made
available to the currently installed labs.  It was suggested a bootable
Linux CD with the selected software be made for non-lab use by teachers
or contributors at home.

One other technical query - it would be nice if the teachers could lock
and turn off all the sounds on the PCs in the lab to teach.

...

I only covered the last session goals - Jason and David(?) were also
taking notes, and will be posting them soonish.

A new mailing list was created for the curriculum development project -
curriculum-dev (?).  Someone should announce it in a separate email.

Cheers,

Neil
-- 
Neil Blakey-Milner
nbm@mithrandr.moria.org