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

[melba]

   Greetings!



   This may be useful to those in this discussion found this on Calyx site
   https://calyxinstitute.org/.

   with gratitude and appreciation,



   Melissa



   2024 also marks four years since we launched our first grant program at
   Calyx. This year, Calyx funded [1]Sunset Spark’s work to develop a
   multi-purpose curriculum focused on privacy, internet infrastructure,
   and the role of the public and private sectors in our digital world. As
   a nonprofit organization offering free education in science and
   technology in the heart of Brooklyn, Sunset Spark equips children and
   young people from diverse backgrounds with digital literacy and skills
   they need to enhance self-protection in today’s digital life. This
   curriculum aims to close the gap in digital inequality and assist K-8
   school teachers in recentering technology education on privacy and
   freedom topics – concerns that are timely and relevant to students and
   their families. Learning from this and our previous work, we are coming
   back in 2025 with an even bigger and more refined grant program to
   support passionate people and projects in the internet freedom
   ecosystem.



   On 2024-12-05 10:26, Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss wrote:

     Hi Carmen
     So are the first few steps here?  Clearly you are reaching out to
     people which is a good     thing, build a team and a team of
     contacts.
     How do we market this,
     What you said here
     "
     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.
     "
     How would this apply to social media, we know that platforms such as
     Instagram and TikTok are popular with the target age groups,
     however do we need to embrace that to reach the audience but mirror
     content on platforms such as Mastodon, PixelFed and Loops (
     [2]https://loops.video/ ) and peertube, for the latter can we make
     use of the existing fsf peertub account.  or we add 'extra' content
     on the more freedom respecting platforms.   We need to hook people
     over I guess.
     How do we factor in the sort of platforms young people use, vs the
     platforms the rest of us use, social media vs forums / mailing lists
     for example,  or use matrix over irc  as it probably looks more like
     what young people are used to, matrix is or can be encrypted for
     example.  It does look nicer, mobile friendly and share a qr code to
     join a room (so like discord).
     Paul
     On 05/12/2024 00:17, Carmen Maris via libreplanet-discuss wrote:

     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 <[3]the@otherrealm.org>
     To: [4]libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
     Subject: Re: Introducing a new project for teenagers in free
     software
       (and how you can help!)
     Message-ID: <[5]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
     [6]http://otherrealm.org
     [7]http://theotherrealm.org (Blog)

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   --
   Ask me how I can support you and your organizations in becoming more
   conscious tech users and move to freedom friendly tools and platforms

References

   1. https://www.sunsetspark.org/
   2. https://loops.video/
   3. mailto:the@otherrealm.org
   4. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
   5. 4aa8dd31-7342-4ac0-b6e4-47c51a4b00ee@otherrealm.org">mailto:4aa8dd31-7342-4ac0-b6e4-47c51a4b00ee@otherrealm.org
   6. http://otherrealm.org/
   7. http://theotherrealm.org/
   8. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
   9. https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
  10. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
  11. https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss