Hello,
I proposed organizing a student essay competition on Free Software and Open Standards topics.
The original letter to the DFD mailing list:
I would like to propose organizing an essay competition for European high school students on Free Software and Open Standards issues. This would have several benefits: it would encourage people to think about Free Software and Open Standards; it would expose more young people to the issues of Free Software and Open Standards (I am of the opinion that educational institutions would rather advertise a student essay competition than distribute, say, FSFE leaflets); it would popularize Free Software; we would probably get new good texts to promote Open Standards and Free Software; if we announced the winners on the DFD using an Open Standard, we would celebrate it in a very suitable fashion and would further publicize the DFD.
I am now going to propose some ideas that could be developed into topics if you agree it is a good idea. -> What am I going to do on the DFD to advance Open Standards and promote Free Software?/What would my ideal DFD experience be? -> What should be done to promote Open Standards? -> What am I going to do to ensure that my government will use open document formats? -> Open standards vs proprietary specifications
Should you agree that such an activity would be nice, we would have to act pretty fast. If we wanted to announce the winners on the DFD, the deadline for sending essays would have to be the 14th of March at the latest and we would probably want to give people at least a month to think and write. We would probably have to have our volunteers contact the national ministries of education and media at least another week in advance. Which means, that should we agree to do this, we would have to have everything decided by the 7th of February.
Following deliberation on the df-coordination@, we have come to the agreement that it would be better to organize a blog post competition and we should stick to a small number of countries (like 3) this year due tto time constraints. Thus, as I would be able to coordinate and publicize this in Estonia, I am looking for volunteers who would be willing to run it in two additional countries.
Furthermore, prize ideas would be welcome.
I think that as we want to popularize Free Software and Open Standards, the prizes could be somehow related to the FSFE. The prizes should be decided based on whether we want to primarily appeal to students who already have an inclination for Free Software or students who do not. If we want to encourage people who have an affinity for Free Software to get active, then we could offer something from the FSFE shop, a FSFE Fellowship, or a Free Software book, etc... If we want to appeal to more students, we would probably have to offer monetary rewards or hardware. I am not sure which group we should target, thus prize ideas and suggestions would be welcome from other interlocutors.
Also, any offers to participate in a jury to grade the entries would also be appreciated.
Faithfully, -- Heiki "Repentinus" Ojasild repentinus@fsfe.org https://wiki.fsfe.org/Fellows/repentinus http://blogs.fsfe.org/repentinus/
No-one interested?
On 3 February 2012 15:18, Heiki "Repentinus" Ojasild repentinus@fsfe.org wrote:
Hello,
I proposed organizing a student essay competition on Free Software and Open Standards topics.
The original letter to the DFD mailing list:
I would like to propose organizing an essay competition for European high school students on Free Software and Open Standards issues. This would have several benefits: it would encourage people to think about Free Software and Open Standards; it would expose more young people to the issues of Free Software and Open Standards (I am of the opinion that educational institutions would rather advertise a student essay competition than distribute, say, FSFE leaflets); it would popularize Free Software; we would probably get new good texts to promote Open Standards and Free Software; if we announced the winners on the DFD using an Open Standard, we would celebrate it in a very suitable fashion and would further publicize the DFD.
I am now going to propose some ideas that could be developed into topics if you agree it is a good idea. -> What am I going to do on the DFD to advance Open Standards and promote Free Software?/What would my ideal DFD experience be? -> What should be done to promote Open Standards? -> What am I going to do to ensure that my government will use open document formats? -> Open standards vs proprietary specifications
Should you agree that such an activity would be nice, we would have to act pretty fast. If we wanted to announce the winners on the DFD, the deadline for sending essays would have to be the 14th of March at the latest and we would probably want to give people at least a month to think and write. We would probably have to have our volunteers contact the national ministries of education and media at least another week in advance. Which means, that should we agree to do this, we would have to have everything decided by the 7th of February.
Following deliberation on the df-coordination@, we have come to the agreement that it would be better to organize a blog post competition and we should stick to a small number of countries (like 3) this year due tto time constraints. Thus, as I would be able to coordinate and publicize this in Estonia, I am looking for volunteers who would be willing to run it in two additional countries.
Furthermore, prize ideas would be welcome.
I think that as we want to popularize Free Software and Open Standards, the prizes could be somehow related to the FSFE. The prizes should be decided based on whether we want to primarily appeal to students who already have an inclination for Free Software or students who do not. If we want to encourage people who have an affinity for Free Software to get active, then we could offer something from the FSFE shop, a FSFE Fellowship, or a Free Software book, etc... If we want to appeal to more students, we would probably have to offer monetary rewards or hardware. I am not sure which group we should target, thus prize ideas and suggestions would be welcome from other interlocutors.
Also, any offers to participate in a jury to grade the entries would also be appreciated.
Faithfully,
Heiki "Repentinus" Ojasild repentinus@fsfe.org https://wiki.fsfe.org/Fellows/repentinus http://blogs.fsfe.org/repentinus/
Hi Heiki,
Sorry for the late reply, I had an incredibly busy week end at FOSDEM.
Il 07/02/2012 10:08, Heiki "Repentinus" Ojasild ha scritto:
Following deliberation on the df-coordination@, we have come to the agreement that it would be better to organize a blog post competition and we should stick to a small number of countries (like 3) this year due tto time constraints. Thus, as I would be able to coordinate and publicize this in Estonia, I am looking for volunteers who would be willing to run it in two additional countries.
I would be glad to run it in Italy. I don't know if I will be successful because I don't live in Italy at the moment, but I have a few contacts in high schools. I could also contact a website proposing this kind of initiative for students. Do you think it would be enough to spread the voice about this initiative?
Best,
On 7 February 2012 10:13, Alessandro Polvani alessandro.polvani@fsfe.org wrote:
I would be glad to run it in Italy. I don't know if I will be successful because I don't live in Italy at the moment, but I have a few contacts in high schools. I could also contact a website proposing this kind of initiative for students. Do you think it would be enough to spread the voice about this initiative?
Basically yes. We also need a jury and one more country would still be useful.
Sincerely,
Hello,
I think that as we want to popularize Free Software and Open
Standards, the prizes could be somehow related to the FSFE. The
prizes
should be decided based on whether we want to primarily appeal to students who already have an inclination for Free Software or
students
who do not. If we want to encourage people who have an affinity for Free Software to get active, then we could offer something from the FSFE shop, a FSFE Fellowship, or a Free Software book, etc... If we want to appeal to more students, we would probably have to offer monetary rewards or hardware. I am not sure which group we should target, thus prize ideas and suggestions would be welcome from other interlocutors.
What about about giving to the winner a laptop or desktop with current freedom tools that one use in his day-today life - a freedom box, Free Software social networks, browser and OS?
Judith Lukoki +33 (0)6 15 94 50 23 http://www.movingyouth.eu http://blog.ethicalsocialnetwork.org
Hello,
I think that as we want to popularize Free Software and Open
Standards, the prizes could be somehow related to the FSFE. The
prizes
should be decided based on whether we want to primarily appeal to students who already have an inclination for Free Software or
students
who do not. If we want to encourage people who have an affinity for Free Software to get active, then we could offer something from the FSFE shop, a FSFE Fellowship, or a Free Software book, etc... If we want to appeal to more students, we would probably have to offer monetary rewards or hardware. I am not sure which group we should target, thus prize ideas and suggestions would be welcome from other interlocutors.
What about about giving to the winner a laptop or desktop with current freedom tools that one use in his day-today life - a freedom box, Free Software social networks, browser and OS?
Judith Lukoki +33 (0)6 15 94 50 23 http://www.movingyouth.eu http://blog.ethicalsocialnetwork.org
* judith@movingyouth.eu judith@movingyouth.eu [2012-02-08 14:18:55 +0100]:
What about about giving to the winner a laptop or desktop with current freedom tools that one use in his day-today life - a freedom box, Free Software social networks, browser and OS?
This kind of hardware is a bit difficult for FSFE as a prize. Most of the hardware relies on non-free drivers, and we would have to find hardware that does not depend on that. I do not want to give something to a winner, which forces him to use non-free software.
Regards, Matthias
You could give away Lemote Yeeloong as a prize, they are running 100% Free Software, including the bios. I know tekmote.nl imports them in the Netherlands.
Just a thought :)
Cheers, Jelle
On Wed, 8 Feb 2012 14:40:12 +0100, discussion-bounces@fsfeurope.org wrote:
- judith@movingyouth.eu judith@movingyouth.eu [2012-02-08 14:18:55 +0100]:
What about about giving to the winner a laptop or desktop with current freedom tools that one use in his day-today life - a freedom box, Free Software social networks, browser and OS?
This kind of hardware is a bit difficult for FSFE as a prize. Most of the hardware relies on non-free drivers, and we would have to find hardware that does not depend on that. I do not want to give something to a winner, which forces him to use non-free software.
Regards, Matthias
-- Matthias Kirschner - FSFE - Fellowship Coordinator, German Coordinator FSFE, Linienstr. 141, 10115 Berlin, t +49-30-27595290 +49-1577-1780003 Free Software is important to you? Join today! (fsfe.org/join) Weblog (blogs.fsfe.org/mk) - Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
Dear all,
* Heiki Repentinus Ojasild repentinus@fsfe.org [2012-02-03 15:18:39 +0000]:
I proposed organizing a student essay competition on Free Software and Open Standards topics.
[...]
Yesterday and today I spoke with Heiki and Alessandro about the idea for the short essay competition. I very much like the idea to get students involved in Document Freedom Day, and get them to think about how to save their documents.
After some considerations about the activity Heiki, Alessandro, and I now agreed that we will not do this activity for this year, but that we will do it for next years DFD. Heiki will work together with the education team to think about how to best approach the students for the contest, what kind of reward would be appealing to them, how we measure who is the winner, ...
We will do this with more time in advance, like starting with it already in September to get many students and teachers involved in this.
So we already have a very good idea for next year!
Best Regards, Matthias