free software promotion and local status

[Paul Sutton]

Hi

On of the digital skills sites is https://www.learnmyway.com/ I think th
e issue with these digital unite et al is lack of volunteers who are the
digital champions with these skills to share them.

It needs education on open standards,  but the argument is that everyone
uses MS word, and closed software as it seen as 'standard'.  Sites
suchas learnmyway also cover how to use facebook,  and make no mentionof
privacy aware social media.

While we can make an argument to them for using open standards, we can
perhaps spend our time teaching via the Internet,

Within the free software community there is some 'mentoring' such as
within Debian, I have requested this as I need to learn packaging.

I also feel that here is also an emphasis, in our communities, on self
learning, self research, having a go rather than simply asking (or in
some cases demanding help).  An expectation to search before asking.

If we perhaps offered something similar to debian-mentoring but for
general free software, sign post people to similar help and within that
discussion promote people like the learning machine, and once we have
'educated' our way, with the passion we have for this,  as this has to
come from the heart, and not from the fact you are being paid to do it.

End goal would perhaps be to teach people how to contribute in an
effective way

All this can be done via e-mail, and may have the effect of producing
people who then go to digitial unite , learn my way to either be digital
champions with free software skills or ask for more help in these skills
which will create the demand that way.

I need help with packaging, using tools like git, github,
salsa.debian.org properly,  local providers are not going to do this,
until there is a demand.

What is also needed is recognition that these skills are useful, we in
the community don't need a qualification to prove our skills, we learn
and help each other and recognize each others skills.

Just a thought, I can try and convince people to offer training in libre
office but one person won't make any difference.

Paul

On 06/05/2019 09:04, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:


> Hi Paul,
> thanks for sharing your experiences!
> 
> Helping others to understand Free Software is an ongoing task
> and it needs wit and patience. :)
> 
> Am Freitag 03 Mai 2019 13:01:52 schrieb Paul Sutton:
>> I tried to approach people such as digital unite in the UK, who are
>> working to bridge the digital divide by developing digital skills.
> 
> That is https://www.digitalunite.com/ I guess.
> 
>> They work on a set curriculum on how to use digital kit, use the
>> Internet, use e-mail, social media etc,  and this is set by people above
>> them and funded by government.
> 
> One of the next step can be to find out who has an influence
> about what is taught and then start reasoning with them.
> (There is quite a bit of evidence that teaching skill with and for Free 
> Software products is better. Maybe some of this can be used to argu the 
> point.)
> 
> Best Regards,
> Bernhard
> 
> 
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-- 
Paul Sutton
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