Talk:Curriculum Jam Boston

Kevin's Braindumpspace

• I am interested in an event that is as much about making friends of area educators as it is about developing free curriculum. I think that the voices, faces, and stories of nearby teachers will be a big motivating factor for work as the year goes on. We need a little more teacher's lounge in our internet-mediated pursuits!

• Perhaps each day has a theme. For example, Friday is for people who are sort of already "sold" on the idea while Saturday is a bigger jam with free pizza and other activities. Sunday we try to get the max number of learners and students to do "bug tests." ;)

• Free pizza for everyone who comes with a favorite learning activity to share!

• We need to make things that people can take back to their schools, homes, friends, classmates, professors, colleagues, etc.

• Working at the same time as other jams around the world is so powerful that we should do everything possible to hold our event on Oct 5-7. A big projector with an IRC channel would be da bomb.

• We need a one-sheet in advance describing teachers' rights as creators and empowering them with the option to license their works for sharing in a global commons.

• Big whiteboards + butcher block paper should visually express the work that is happening so that people who come late can feel like they know what's going on.

• Having a copy machine / scanner (with OCR) nearby would be super helpful.

Questions raised

• What incentives might a person need in order to spend some of their weekend at an event like this?
  • I think there are a reasonable number of people who want to help out with OLPC or open content or education in some way, but just don't know how to get started. Folks like that have been waiting for an event like this, and if you can just find them, they'll jump at the chance.
  • Finding some way to guarantee that their efforts during the weekend will be useful is probably the best recruiting tool you can have. The testing at the end with the actual kids tends to help with this.

• What low hanging fruit exists in this space?
  • There's a ton of curricular material out there that isn't available under an open license. I'm not entirely sure why - I think it's a mix of people not being aware that open content is an option, them not knowing where or how to post/leverage their work and design it for usability, and in some cases working for schools or organizations that might not see the value of releasing material for free to the general public. Would a mini-curriculum designed to educate educators about open content be feasible as a project for the Jam? Wikieducator has a good start in its wiki tutorial.
  • There might be some stuff on Wikiversity that's adaptable for children, or existing open content textbooks out there that were written by people that were really good at the subject but not necessarily really good at teaching/explaining.
  • User-friendly documentation for technical tools that allow people to collaborate and contribute - not just how to use specific software, but also what it is and why it's so useful. Something like http://www.commoncraft.com/show, even.

• If someone can only come for an hour or two, how can they best contribute?
  • One way is by searching for existing sources of good free content - either entire websites and repositories of quality content, or by going through those repositories and curating a smaller list of very high-quality material that we can then use as examples to show people "look at the kinds of cool stuff you can do!"

• Who is going to give us free pizza (or burritos or chinese food or sushi or other easily shareable foods?)
  • The local coffee shops are usually fairly easily persuaded to donate coffee. Sometimes it helps if you ask restaurants to donate meals for half the attendees - 25 people instead of 50, say.

• What professional networks already exist to whom we can reach out?

• How many people will come to an event like this?
  • One important thing is to make sure they're the right people - make sure at least half the attendees have had some experience with open content before, so they can teach their fellow attendees by example.
  • Maybe aim for about 30 attendees - 10 teams of 3 teachers each?

• Can we have monster movies and sleeping bags at night like an after-prom lock-in?
  • Oh man, please do. The down-times for relaxation are usually where the best ideas pop up and where friendships really get going, after all.