Specialist Schools Sponsorship
From Schoolforge-UK
Following correspondence with the Specialist Schools Trust about sponsorship by Microsoft ( see news article) Ian Lynch has prepared this proposal for a sponsorship package from the Open Source community worth £20,000 per school. In estimating the true value of the proposal, Richard Rothwell points out this link. Comments are invited via the discussion page.
Sponsorship proposal from the Open Source Community
The Open Source community will sponsor up to 200 schools between May 2006 and October 2008. The sponsorship will be administered through the Specialists Schools Trust acting as stakeholder and will be donated through Schoolforge UK. The Specialist Schools Trust will decide which schools will benefit from the sponsorship but it is suggested that schools that have development plans that include quantified learning outcomes associated with Open Source resources and focussed on social inclusion, equality of opportunity, internationalism and social enterprise will be most suitable candidates for sponsorship. Further advice is available from Schoolforge UK on request.
The sponsorship package is comprised as follows:
A specialist schools software disc unique to the specialist schools program with applications to support all the generic applications needed by a school including a professional standard word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation program, graphic illustration program, web browser and E-mail client, image management software, music technology and audio software and a web based application for electronic registration.
Further discs will be available that contain other software. One example will be in the field of systems software. This software will include web and network servers, internet proxying software, firewalls, Virtual Leaning Environments, network management software and a range of operating systems. These will be sufficient to run and manage all of the 'back-office' applications and systems needed by a school. We will also provide support to locate or develop appropriate software for other educational and management needs of the schools.
The schools will have unlimited use of these software titles both within the schools themselves and across their community partners and family of schools. New resources will be made available to the school throughout the period of the sponsorship.
We will provide training in the use of Open Source products for as many staff in the school as the school wishes and we will provide extended unlimited E-mail support through a specially constructed forum for specialist schools on the Schoolforge UK website. We will provide advice and support to schools on a wide range of educationally beneficial open source projects, for example the opportunities for learning through participation offered by the Wikipedia project, the world's biggest encyclopaedia. With Wikipedia schools can choose an area of interest and contribute to what is rapidly becoming the definitive organised information source on the Internet.
We will support and develop links between schools and their local Open Source user groups and companies. This will foster school / community links at all levels from practical and technical to that of governors.
We will provide free assessor training for the International Grades in Office Technology certification programme which has already been adopted in the development plans of 50 specialist schools and in 10 countries around the World. We will provide free assessor status for sponsored schools throughout the 4 year development plans of successful schools.
There will be no obligations for schools to take up all or any specific parts of the sponsorship. We value this package at £30,000 per school but it is up to the schools to decide how to get the best value from this package in their particular circumstances.
Specialist Schools sponsored by the Open Source Community would be encouraged, in turn, to share their expertese and knowledge with the community. This could be through a number of mechanisms including publishing worksheets, reviews of software and course materials.
