Re: [Fsfe-uk] Membership

[David Casal]

On Tue, 27 May 2003, ian wrote:

> Our initial link with Birmingham crossed the School HE/FE divide in the
> following way. We were approached by a DTi scheme that gives grants to
> small businesses. Birmingham Uni is the DTi consultant so we use our
> small grant to get advice from them. In the course of that we got
> talking about free software needs for schools so he said provide a wish
> list for under-graduate projects - they are always looking for ideas. So
> if we provide the prioritised needs list for education free software,
> the universities can get their students to pick which ones they like the
> sound of. They are then motivated by contributing something useful and
> the school pool for free software grows. If there was some funding
> available to co-ordinate this it would be a lot more effective. I even
> had a US university E-mail me for the wish list so I guess there is
> interest.We could keep track of which projects were being done,
> completed etc on the schoolforge website making available rpms or
> whatever for download when completed.

This is precisely what the JISC want the advisory service to take care of.
Not only compiling and publishing (and maintaining) such a list, but
actively promoting reviews, college/university involvement, etc.

If you don't mind, I'll mention your efforts (including theingots.org) in
our presentation as a model for what could be done within a centralised
FE/HE service.

d

David Casal
e:  address@hidden
w:  ariada.uea.ac.uk/~dcasal
p:  (+44) 07803 173 959