From:	 Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>
To:	 ew@epe.org, el@ascd.org, rusty@kuro5hin.org,
	 editors@linux-mag.com, lwn@lwn.net, NEGP@ed.gov,
	 circuits@nytimes.com, editors@newsforge.com, technation@aol.com,
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	 maggie@biggs.com, dan@newsforge.com, chaa@washpost.com,
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	 crawfordd@acm.org, rob.elmore@abc.com, flonesaw@longship.net,
	 mfoley@zd.com, efoster@infoworld.com
Subject: SCHOOLFORGE COALITION FORMED TO ADVANCE OPEN RESOURCES IN
Date:	 Tue, 08 Jan 2002 12:00:25 -0500

SCHOOLFORGE COALITION FORMED TO ADVANCE OPEN RESOURCES IN EDUCATION

THE INTERNET, January 8, 2002 -- Schoolforge, a global coalition of
online groups dedicated to promoting open resources in education,
announced its formation today. The online project is located at
http://www.schoolforge.net.

In November of 2001, members of the online groups SEUL/edu
(http://www.seul.org/edu), Open Source Schools
(http://www.opensourceschools.org), the K-12 Linux in Schools
project (http://www.k12os.org), and the Open Source Educational
Foundation (http://www.osef.org) decided to develop a central
organization to provide help for educators seeking the advantages of
open resources and open source/free software. Composed of 30
open-resource-focused educational organizations on five continents,
the all-volunteer Schoolforge project hopes to harness the
collective strengths of educators by enabling them to share
technical and pedagogical expertise far beyond their localities.

"For too long," said SEUL/edu leader and Schoolforge spokesman Doug
Loss, "our many projects suffered from isolation and low visibility.
Our lack of a unified organization often meant that our efforts as
educators and as technologists were duplicative. Isolated, we could
neither build on our colleagues successes, nor learn from their
failures."

Schoolforge is intended to help its member organizations to:

 * introduce open resources, including free/open source
   software, to primary and secondary educational settings;
 * help educators use and develop open resources, including
   free curricula and free software;
 * foster local and global volunteer support networks to
  implement free/open source educational solutions; and
   * provide open forums for educators to share information with
  colleagues, and with corporate and governmental educational
   stakeholders.

Schoolforge member organizations are made of volunteers, teachers
and technologists in elementary and high schools around the world
who are committed to harnessing the Internet and open resources to
help teachers teach and help students learn. Contributions to open
resource projects are free and open to anyone who desires to use
them, and can never be withdrawn from public use.

Schoolforge's member groups are delivering the power of open
resources to primary and secondary educators. While some Sourceforge
groups are focused on bringing open source and free software
resources to schools in need of low- or zero-cost alternatives to
proprietary software, other member organizations have broader goals:
"When we use the term 'open resources,' we mean a lot more than free
software," said David Bucknell, Open Source Schools Project head and
Schoolforge co-spokesman. "Open resources are educational tools made
by educators, for  educators, sharing the experience they've gained
in both the classroom and the lab. That can include everything from
folk wisdom to lesson plans, and from software to documentation."

Visitors to Schoolforge.net will find links to SEUL/edu's successful
case studies from around the world
(http://richtech.ca/seul/casedex.html), and Open Source Schools'
how-tos, reviews, and informative essays
(http://opensourceschools.org). Links are also provided to projects
dedicated to free and open source educational and administrative
software (http://richtech.ca/seul/), and free curriculum and free
science instructional texts (http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/). A list of
all current members, and information for organizations interested in
joining, can be found at
(http://www.schoolforge.net/membership.php).  "We're hoping to put
behind us the day when computers were used to teach students how to
use branded computer products, and to lock hapless school districts
into a never-ending treadmill of hardware and software spending,"
Loss said. "We don't want another teacher ever to have to learn a
proprietary interface, only to have his or her experience rendered
useless with the next product upgrade or business failure. Open
resources promise to make technology a powerful tool for education,
not the other way around."

CONTACT:

The Schoolforge member organization that sent you this release, or

Doug Loss
dloss@seul.org
(570) 326-3987 (US)

or

David Bucknell
david@iteachnet.org
66-2 583-5874 (Thailand)
US Fax: 775-244-0803

or

Harry McGregor
schoolforge@osef.org
(520) 661-7875 (US)

--
Doug Loss                 All I want is a warm bed
Data Network Coordinator  and a kind word and
Bloomsburg University     unlimited power.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Ashleigh Brilliant