[OSGeo-Edu] Re: OEGEO Logo

[Jo Walsh]

dear Tyler, all,
On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 09:41:09PM -0700, Tyler Mitchell wrote:
> I think we still have a few issues to work through around this:
> 1) We have no existing certification programme, so this would be the  
> first time the education group has put our stamp on anything.

So this looks like a great opportunity to work this out. :)

> What would our endorsement mean?  Without clear requirements, it is  
> meaningless.  

This reminds me of the early software incubation discussions a lot.
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Project_Evaluation_Criteria 
Both longer-term/meaningful goals (how to simplify admission and 
understanding in the future) and short-term/reproducible ones 
(using the projects that were likely to graduate earliest as a 
testbed for the core requirements) influenced what came out.

Why not just start writing? 
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Teaching_Material_Evaluation_Criteria 

http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Core_Curriculum_Project contains a lot
of early discussion and thoughts on related topics. Arnulf's comment
about timescale differences between term- or semester- long courses,
and intensive bootstrap 'training' type courses, caught my eye.

> I'm not saying we shouldn't endorse Gary's course but I feel like we  
> haven't got ourselves organised enough yet to do this in a meaningful  
> and reproducible way.  It is something that I, personally, think we  
> need to get a handle on first.  Of course Gary's work is useful and  
> valuable - so how do we best get behind him to support that work  
> while at the same applying a longer term vision for the idea of  
> certification?
> Does this make sense or am I needlessly throwing up barriers?

This does, as usual make sense, though maybe I'd caution against
too much caution - it looks as if from the thinking that has been done
and the recent discussion there's no big source of controversy here? 
Would it be reckless to suggest that EduCom write some minimal
guidelines by Friday that could be recommended to the board for
sanction? And then EduCom could make these kinds of judgement calls with
complete autonomy and trust in the future.

Either way, I definitely would add my support to Frank's case
for being able to do some good mutual promotion with Gary's work and
encourage others to reuse it.

cheers,


jo