Re: Re: Introducing a new project for teenagers in free software (and how you can help!)

[carmenmaris]

Hi Aaron,

Down the road, a project like that could be really interesting once
 I'm more established. However,  for the first year or so I need to work
 with what I can do with more or less just me and a very small budget.
I'm already expecting to do an awful amount. 

> Although there 
are definitely issues with GitHub, privacy, and consuming open source 
technologies for closed source gain, I was just looking at some of the 
learning materials on GitHub and I think there may be funding or 
technical support available from Microsoft to create such a 
project.Obviously we need to make sure that the objective is learning 
code, not learning to use GitHub, and promoting open source software, 
not maximizing profit to the determent of society.

I'd be very cautious about this, to be honest. The idea that free software is 
an ethical imperative is really important to me, and I don't want to encourage 
anyone to use non-free software or give the impression I endorse it. 

>  am connected to both the education and engineering departments at 
UMass in Massachusetts, USA and will put feelers out for potential 
collaborators. Do you have a website/other documents with more info on 
the framework?
Thank you!

I don't have anything I can give you immediately (what I have contains a lot 
of sensitive information), but you're very welcome to pass my e-mail address
 along. I'm delighted to answer questions. 

It might help to know I'm taking a really broad approach to who belongs in
free software. I don't just want to attract future programmers (although they're
 very important!!). It's also important for me to bring in teens that might be 
interested in learning other skills like technical writing or UX design, as 
well as
young people in general that are just interested in how technology affects them 
and 
society. There are many ways to be interested in technology, and they're all 
valuable.
I want my community to be a welcoming place for people who love computers in
all sorts of unique ways. 

- Carmen


> Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2024 11:23:24 -0500
> From: Aaron E-J <the@otherrealm.org>
> To: libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
> Subject: Re: Introducing a new project for teenagers in free software
>  (and how you can help!)
> Message-ID: <4aa8dd31-7342-4ac0-b6e4-47c51a4b00ee@otherrealm.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>
> I have thought that the idea of working on open source projects as 
> learning tools would be a great win-win-win opportunity to advance 
> education.I am coming in the context of the college level, but I think 
> we need to start students down the path towards free software as early 
> as possible.The name for the project I was thinking of is called "World 
> Piece" or "World Pieces" and it is a play on the notion of breaking 
> learning goals into code tasks.Basically how I was thinking this would 
> work is, given a topic to be learnt, there is some auto-curation of open 
> source git repositories with open tasks to be completed.Although there 
> are definitely issues with GitHub, privacy, and consuming open source 
> technologies for closed source gain, I was just looking at some of the 
> learning materials on GitHub and I think there may be funding or 
> technical support available from Microsoft to create such a 
> project.Obviously we need to make sure that the objective is learning 
> code, not learning to use GitHub, and promoting open source software, 
> not maximizing profit to the determent of society.However, I think the 
> general concept of integrating open project issues into learning tasks 
> is a far more efficacious means of teaching than having students work on 
> meaningless one-off homework that has no larger purpose.There could even 
> be the chance to get industry funding for students to earn money based 
> on completion of sponsored tasks, although again, we need to be careful 
> to not turn this into an exploitative means of getting cheap labor.
>
> I am connected to both the education and engineering departments at 
> UMass in Massachusetts, USA and will put feelers out for potential 
> collaborators.Do you have a website/other documents with more info on 
> the framework?Do you think my idea and yours can be melded into some 
> sort of larger plan?
>
> Aaron E-J
> The Other Realm
> http://otherrealm.org
> http://theotherrealm.org (Blog)
>
>