Samantha Bail and I recently submitted this proposal for Becta's Teach Us A Lesson competition.

Let me know what you think?

The idea:

Motivation

With the internet providing access to vast amounts of information, informal learning beyond established structures has become easier and more popular than ever. No longer do people only learn in the classroom, but also peer to peer, friend to friend, online and offline.

Throughout Great Britain like minded people interested in technology and digital media get together at regular events to share ideas and skills, discuss new developments and extend their personal network.

In the North West of England alone, there are almost daily events ranging from informal meetings (such as “Girl Geek Dinners”), programming workshops (such as “PHP User Groups”) to weekend long conferences (such as “Barcamps”). Most events are organised by the communities themselves and aim to be free, open and accessible to all. This is a great way of keeping up to date with modern technology, developing new skills and sharing knowledge, while not being constrained to formal learning environments.

However, whilst these events are widely attended, a lot of the information and knowledge shared is simply lost after the event, preventing those who were unable to attend from participating.

Aims

We aim to create a platform that offers access to information and content presented at such events whilst also encouraging attendees to discuss and share ideas afterwards.

This will preserve the knowledge for both the attendees and those who could not be there, combining it into a pool of information and making it accessible to anyone who is interested in the topic – beyond regional boundaries.

In addition, this will also encourage people who are not aware of the offerings provided by a particular community to learn and benefit from past and future events.

This platform will combine different types of information such as event summaries in written form, presentation slides, as well as audio and video recordings to create a multimedia “mash up”. We will also encourage users to interactively participate through discussions and microblogging integration (such as via “Twitter”).

Method

We will develop a website in the form of a multimedia knowledge base that is centred around a calendar type structure. We will include information on upcoming and past events that combines content from various internal and external sources – such as image, audio and video, microblogging, attendance lists, slides, discussion boards and hyperlinks to related web content. We will allow for editable text content (based on a “Wiki” structure) that summarises and reviews the event in an objective form. Data (including event dates, which are mainly obtained from an already existing event calendar) can be added and edited by registered users and is retro-actively moderated.

The technology used will be based upon an existing open source content management system (CMS), adapted to purpose. By utilising existing plug-ins as well as developing bespoke modules where required, we will efficiently create an open platform that can be easily extended. This makes the project cost-effective and easy to maintain. As a result of community contribution, the cost and effort of creating content and keeping it up-to-date will be minimised – as opposed to a single organisation being the “content provider”.

Sharing and reusing of content will be supported by users licensing their content on the platform under a “Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0” license.

As this project is a prototype, we will initially focus on events in the North West of England, with a view to expanding in due course. Whilst basing the platform on technology related events, the general concept and structure clearly allow for use by other interest groups, such as the cultural and voluntary sector.

Thoughts & feedback?

Many reading my blog will not have heard the name Richard Rothwell and thus will have very little idea of his significance in the early days of DFEY.

I first encountered Richard, like many others, via the Schoolforge-uk (SF-UK) mailing list, with his posts on free software and LTSP related subjects.

Ben Webb and I, on hearing he would be speaking at Manchester Free Software group in May 2008 about Sustainable Education Solutions, went along to see what we could gather.

As probably one of the only Manchester Free Software talks that was not been videoed (release of the videos is a separate issue!), it was a talk that I vividly remember regretting it was not being recorded mid-talk. I regret this to this day.

I am going to be speaking on Wednesday at the upcoming meeting of Liverpool LUG

"This month’s talk will be given by Tim Dobson from DFEY-NW. He will be talking about what "Digital Freedom in Education and Youth (DFEY)" is all about and how free software communities can engage with young people. He'll then open the floor to questions. This talk will be filmed and posted online under a Creative Commons Licence.

"Tim is an active member of the Manchester Free Software group and is well known at many other technical events. Having just finished his A levels, in his spare time, he enjoys dinghy sailing."

The meeting will be held on

Wednesday July 1, 2009 from 7:00pm - 8:00pm

at

Liverpool Social Centre
96 Bold Street
Liverpool, England L1 4HY

Moral support would really be appreciated!

This XKCD cartoon strangely captures essence of most of my complaints with the way ICT and technical subjects are taught in schools.

For me, it was a extensive number of weekends trying to make various different project work and multiple evenings getting to know the right people in the tech industry - thanks to the vibrant north west technical communities.

Please pass this on to anyone you think might be interested.

DFEY-NW (Digital Freedom in Education & Youth - North West) is a group focusing on young people and issues of freedom in the digital world, based in the Northwest of England at the moment.

When
  Saturday April 25th 2009 12:30pm -> ~4:00pm

Where
  BBC Manchester, New Broadcasting House, Oxford Road, Manchester, M60 1SJ
  Photo: http://tiny.pl/z7bf
  Map: http://tiny.pl/z7b1
  Nearest train station: Manchester Oxford Road (3 mins walking distance)

Attending?
  Due to BBC restrictions, you need to tell us: http://dfeynw4.eventbrite.com/
  or feel free to email us on team at nw.dfey.org to let us know you are coming...

Ubuntu 9.04 'Jaunty' Release Party
  The day before the meeting is the Ubuntu release party in Manchester.
  It looks like it's going to be a load of fun. Maybe see you there?
  Details: http://is.gd/sKLf

In case you need it, here's some contact information:
  Tim's mobile: 07922334403
  Email: team at nw.dfey.org

Parents are worried their children will not be able to tell the difference between Reality and Virtual Reality (in a game or online).

In actual fact, the children grow up knowing the different expectation in social behaviour for the two different environments where as the parents never have.

--Tim Dobson - a few seconds ago....