On Wed, 2011-01-12 at 14:08 -0500, Matthew Jadud wrote: > More questions and discussion about the needs of the users (the > faculty---who are they, who do we want to support?) and how best to > meet those needs is a good idea. While I understand the spirit of > Chris's point of view, I don't think it gets at the reality of the > vast majority of POSSE participants to date, or the broader community > of educators that we hope (need?) to engage. To that end, more > user-centered discussion and questions to people like Mel (who has > helped run just about every POSSE to date) would be a Very Good Thing.
Somehow I think my point of view has been conflated with the "pain and suffering is necessary" perspective. Just to be clear: I am entirely in favor of making life easier for faculty, in particular: push-button pony making. I am not in favor of creating push-button pony making facilities when they already exist in open source communities, which is where we want our students to work. As an example: GitHub provides fantastically well-administered git repositories, on demand, with lots of gorgeous bells and whistles, for free (unless you want a private/closed repo). It's where many, many open source developers are already working. I don't think TOS.o can do much better, and we shouldn't try, because we'd be taking people away from the place where hardcore work is being done; first choice is to use existing projects' repos, second choice is to create repos in the same neighborhood as existing projects. But as I mentioned, I'm not aware of a push-button planet maker, and since planets are valuable when teaching open source, that's one of the things we should provide. -Chris _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
