The current TeachingOpenSource.org initiative started in March 2009, 16 months ago. This pause between academic years is a good time to step back and take stock of what we've done and where we're going.
The original vision for TeachingOpenSource.org was that it would serve as "a neutral collaboration point for professors, institutions, communities, and companies to come together and make the teaching of Open Source a global success". It's been a interesting year-and-a-bit: - We have grown to 226 members on this list! Many others have come and gone. - A number of projects/initiatives have been started. Several have been executed well, and others have withered on the vine. In particular, the textbook and POSSE have been quite successful. - Overall, I think we have succeeded in a significant way: the teaching of community-involved open source is growing. There are more profs teaching open source at more institutions than ever before (though we're still at an early stage, and we don't have good hard data on this). We're starting to share ideas, models, and war stories, and we're building some good resources. So what's next? How far can we get by next summer, and what do we need to do to get there? - TeachingOpenSource.org includes active participants from many institutions (.edu in shorthand), open source vendors (.com), and organizations (.org). It's great to see diversity in this group; I take it as confirmation of the neutral-umbrella concept. One group of contributors has been particularly active: the Red Hat community architecture team. The fabulous team of Greg (while at Red Hat), Karsten, Max, and Mel have been the driving force behind both POSSE and the textbook project. While we have a growing number of .edu's involved here, I would like to see a greater number and diversity of .com and .org participants in TOS. - The TOS infrastructure needs to grow with the community (see my separate e-mail on this topic). - We need some serious wiki gardening :-) - The textbook needs some beta-testing love, and to move toward 1.0. - We're still in the early days of the teaching of open source. Many of the faculty participants here are so heads-down in our teaching and research that the hard problems of TOS aren't getting the attention and traction that they deserve; we need to continue to discuss our experiences, solutions, and best practices in the teaching of open source. Let's open this up: What are your reflections on the first year(+) of TOS, where do we need to go next, and what is your role in helping us get there? -Chris _______________________________________________ tos mailing list [email protected] http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
