I noticed in The Guardian's educational supplement last week [1] that the free of charge teaching materials that they make available to teachers are Powerpoint files, and are unnecessarily referred to as 'Powerpoints' rather than presentations or slide-shows:
"you can now find a one-hour PowerPoint lesson that can be used both in the classroom and at home"
"The PowerPoint gives children the information and vocabulary to devise their own challenging science questions"
This presents an opportunity to contact the journalist concerned, and copy in the Guardian's education desk, reminding them of Open Documents, Open Standards, and their particular importance to education. It could also help develop press relations with this important newspaper, which hosts annual conferences on education and public sector technology amongst other things.
What do you think would be the best way to approach the issue in our message? Who do you think the message should be from (edu team, UK team)?
Please contribute to ideas and the draft itself before the end of this week.
Thanks,
Sam.
1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/apr/11/space-travel-guardian-teache...
On Wed, 2011-04-20 at 15:47 +0100, Sam Tuke wrote:
Please contribute to ideas and the draft itself before the end of this week.
Forgot to include link to etherpad:
http://etherpad.fsfe.org/C8mmXFOpuw
Sam.
Hi all,
What do you think would be the best way to approach the issue in our message?
The message should either be directed to the specific journalist or the newspaper itself (maybe the educational part is not the only one where they refer to PowerPoint). Contacting the journalist could be tricky (is there an e-mail-adress known of him?).
What about writing an e-mail to the journalist and a letter (is there fsfe letter paper?) to The Guardian. We could also offer them support in IT-related educational questions so that hole thing would'nt look like an 'instruction' from the fsfe.
Who do you think the message should be from (edu team, UK team)?
Maybe both. Would that be a problem?
Greetings,
Sebastian
Hello all,
On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 03:47:41PM +0100, Sam Tuke wrote:
I noticed in The Guardian's educational supplement last week [1] that the free of charge teaching materials that they make available to teachers are Powerpoint files, and are unnecessarily referred to as 'Powerpoints' rather than presentations or slide-shows:
thanks Sam for bringing this up. The "Powerpoint" issue itself has not so much to do with education and is more a general problem. Though, I really like the idea to use that opportunity to get the foot in the door in the edu related editorial department of the Guardian.
It is a common issue throughout Europe and it's advantageous to start fighting it in UK, because we can re-use at least parts of the text as a template to be translated into other languages.
In other words: I'm eager to help! :)
Who do you think the message should be from (edu team, UK team)?
Looking at the long term goal to develop press relations, I'd say it's best that the UK team contacts them. AFAIK it helps if the journalist(s) have only one point of contact when dealing with an organisation.
Either way, on their side, the message should come from FSFE, period. Only the individual sending the mail should be someone from the UK team, since the UK team is the group that is likely to make the most use of the relationship. If the edu-team has something for them, we can pass it through you guys.
Whatever we (the edu-team) do, we should do it in close cooperation with the corresponding country teams to avoid double work and confusion and share resources and information (like contacts to journalists) wherever possible.
Please contribute to ideas and the draft itself before the end of this week.
Sorry, that deadline was too tight for me. May I ask what it made so urgent?
Now, after the deadline passed, is it still an issue for you?
Greetings,
Guido
On Mon, 2011-04-25 at 23:19 +0200, Guido Arnold wrote:
It is a common issue throughout Europe and it's advantageous to start fighting it in UK, because we can re-use at least parts of the text as a template to be translated into other languages.
In other words: I'm eager to help! :)
Excellent, indeed we should make sure that we share results efficiently to save them being repeated.
Looking at the long term goal to develop press relations, I'd say it's best that the UK team contacts them. AFAIK it helps if the journalist(s) have only one point of contact when dealing with an organisation.
Either way, on their side, the message should come from FSFE, period. Only the individual sending the mail should be someone from the UK team, since the UK team is the group that is likely to make the most use of the relationship. If the edu-team has something for them, we can pass it through you guys.
OK, that sounds good. I can sign it at the end of the email from the UK team as well as the Edu team.
Sorry, that deadline was too tight for me. May I ask what it made so urgent?
I don't want to leave it any longer than necessary because the date when the article in question was published is getting further an further away. However, input from the Edu team is far more important than getting out a quick response in my view.
Now, after the deadline passed, is it still an issue for you?
I'm working on it now, so please chip in if you have time.
The etherpad link again:
http://etherpad.fsfe.org/C8mmXFOpuw
Thanks,
Sam.
On 28/04/2011 15:02, Sam Tuke wrote:
On Mon, 2011-04-25 at 23:19 +0200, Guido Arnold wrote:
It is a common issue throughout Europe and it's advantageous to start fighting it in UK, because we can re-use at least parts of the text as a template to be translated into other languages.
In other words: I'm eager to help! :)
Excellent, indeed we should make sure that we share results efficiently to save them being repeated.
Maybe a good place to include this is the Convince Your Friends campaign? (and corresponding wiki page: http://fsfe.org/cyf)
Sorry, that deadline was too tight for me. May I ask what it made so urgent?
I don't want to leave it any longer than necessary because the date when the article in question was published is getting further an further away. However, input from the Edu team is far more important than getting out a quick response in my view.
I went through the letter and it looks very good! I made some little changes and addenda which you are free to remove if you feel it's too much / not appropriate. I would ask the person in charge (who is that?) to approve it and send it without waiting much more.
Thanks, Nico