[kde-edu]: Fwd: [seul-edu] Call for help

[Scott Wheeler]

I don't have time for this, but if any of you folks are looking for ways to 
help out Open Source educational software in general, SEUL/edu is a valuable 
resource to the community, and it looks like they could use some help. 
 
Cheers, 
 
-Scott 
 
----- Forwarded message from Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net> ----- 
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 12:36:56 -0400 
From: Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net> 
Reply-To: seul-edu@seul.org 
Subject: [seul-edu] Call for help 
To: seul-edu@seul.org 
 
Folks, I need your help.  I've been managing SEUL/edu for almost 
four years now.  Lately I've been noticing some signs of incipient 
"burnout" in myself (for you non-native English speakers, "burnout" 
means a feeling of being overwhelmed and in need of a change).  You 
may have noticed that for the past few weeks I've made little 
contribution beyond the minimum needed to keep the site running. 
I'd like to forestall my burnout and at the same time reduce the 
likelihood that such burnout (if it were to happen) would seriously 
affect SEUL/edu. 
 
I think the best way to do that would be to hand off some of the 
responsibilities I've taken on myself for SEUL/edu.  I've already 
done a bit of that, with Les Richardson maintaining the databases we 
use for the Application Index and case studies, and Karl Peņa 
maintaining the case studies themselves.  But there are still a 
number of things I'm doing that I think it would be best to share 
around.  I'll list them below: 
 
* Check Freshmeat, LinuxApps, and other sites (as they occur to me) 
every day for newly announced educational applications and add those 
apps to our Application Index 
 
* Maintain this mailing list, forwarding appropriate messages to it 
that come in from non-subscribers and adding and removing addresses 
to keep the list up to date 
 
* Write the Linux in education report every other Monday 
 
* Work to get the ISO project off the ground 
 
Those four are the major things.  I'd like to have some volunteers 
to take responsibility for some of these.  The first one, checking 
for new apps and adding them to the Index, could be done by more 
than one person; it's important that it gets done every day though, 
I think.  The second one is a one-person job, but not really all 
that tedious if it's the only mailing list you're adminning.  I 
don't mind doing the third one, but it wouldn't hurt to have others 
willing to fill in when I occasionally am overwhelmed at work.  Up 
until now Karl has done so when I'm on vacation, but otherwise I've 
written them all myself.  The fourth one is where I'd like to put my 
own major effort. 
 
In addition to these tasks there are some that aren't currently 
getting done that really need doing.  Our App Index has a number of 
records that are incomplete (lacking author's names and email 
addresses, for example) or out of date (bad URLs, etc.).  Les can 
generate reports of which records need updating, but we need help in 
making those updates. 
 
Our case studies submission form has a field where we ask if the 
submitter would like assistance.  I don't think _anyone_ has said 
"No" to that question, but we have never done anything with that 
information.  We need to come up with some idea and personnel 
committment to do something about that. 
 
We made long-term plans a while ago to create LUG support materials 
to help LUGs in working with schools.  That would be a nice project 
to get started, but I know I won't have the time or energy to lead 
it. 
 
I'd like to get FUDForum or Phorum installed on a SEUL server so 
both SEUL/edu and Schoolforge could use it.  That would give us a 
web forum interface to these discussions in addition to this mailing 
list.  Again, that's something I don't have the time to install or 
maintain. 
 
There you have it.  I'll be happy to give details on what I do for 
those things I'm already doing to anyone interested it taking some 
of them on.  I think it's important that we spread the 
responsibilities around so that if any one of us has to bow out 
temporarily or permanently the work will continue.  Let me hear from 
you! 
 
-- 
How valuable is my contribution? 
Share your feedback at Affero: 
http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=drloss 
 
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 
 
 
 
----- End forwarded message -----