Welcome!

[Jonathan Neubauer]

Welcome everyone!

Just to get everyone up to speed, and to introduce everyone, here's a recap of what we've started working on for this initiative;

Our work here is centered around universities, and educational institutions.  Our goal is to first help students by providing them with the tools and educational resources to learn Joomla! as a CMS and platform, and provide a marketable skill in this economy.

To accomplish that we've identified many goals and avenues that we can pursue to accomplish this mission.  For more information on this initial set of ideas, please see the document we created for that: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gTW_YWcxrj0tXp95QjME73A1NxWbllXcqpoZJ88vo_Y/edit

This is a new initiative, and there's a long way to go.  Currently we've been networking with other individuals interested in assisting us, and reaching out to educational institutions presenting our ideas.

Currently we are engaging with community colleges in Ireland and Vermont (USA), as well as the University of North Carolina.  I'm sure that list will grow, since we're connecting with more people every week.

Our immediate goals are to work with an institution (or a couple institutions), and begin to develop courseware that can be integrated, in part or in whole, into other programs and curriculums.

I'm sure we all know some of the others here, Rob and I have been collaborating closely over the last couple months, along with Paul, Mark, and several others - but if everyone could reply here with what they're interested in, and what they'd like to do, or help with, to accomplish some of these goals (or if you have new goals) it'd be great to get acquainted, and then get right to focusing on our mission!

Thanks again for all your hard work!

Jon

[Paul Orwig]

Thanks Jon for starting this public Google group, and thanks especially for the initiative you and Rob have shown to bring this idea along as far as you have already.

I initially heard from Jon about his desire to be involved with integrating Joomla into higher education curriculums, and I let him know that this was an idea we had previously talked about at the Joomla joint leadership summit in San Jose, CA in July 2011. I helped Jon and Rob connect with Mark Dexter to discuss what the appropriate next steps would be. Recently I connected Sukh with Jon and Rob, due to Sukh's invitation from a South Korean university to help create a Joomla community there including introducing their students to Joomla.

I strongly support the importance of having the Joomla project actively reach out to the higher education community. If we can be effective with this idea, I think it will be a great way for us to recruit more future developer contributions.

Thanks again,

paul

[gerrymc]

Well done to everyone involved in getting this group and initiative off the ground. 

I work with Scoil Mhuire Community School in Clane, Kildare, Ireland, and we just starting a new term of 'Web Design using Joomla'. This is our 2nd group of students to attend this course, so we are delighted to be able to offer this to our community. A difficulty we would have in general with this type of course aimed at adult learners is the vast differences in abilities, experience and expectations of people who attend adult education courses.  This is probably  less of a problem at secondary school or 3rd level.

I think most people who join our courses will join first of all because its a web design course, maybe they know its also about a CMS. I'm not sure at this stage if the fact that its 'Joomla' is a factor in their decision. The decision I think they have to make is whether they should attend the Dreamweaver course or the Joomla course. Being a fan of open source software I will of course champion the Joomla option.

The general public may not be aware of the differences between different content management systems, but some will know of Wordpress as an option for blogging and web design. As a course provider we would also have to look to what the public or community will respond to. There will have to be more public awareness in order for people to sign up to a Joomla web design course as opposed to another type of web design course.

We are also happy to report that our 'PHP and mySQL for beginners' has successfully launched this term. I am aware of 1 or 2 learners who are attending both courses which is great as we will hopefully have some potential developers!

If we can build and develop these courses we would like to add to the mix. We are a 'not for profit' community school so we will run a course even if it just covers the cost of the Tutor. Our courses are relatively cheap, but even so I would like to offer places to students from secondary school level who show an interest or potential. 

Anyway good luck to all involved and I hope to be able to contribute in some way to the group.

Gerry McGowan

[Techbot]

Hi All,

Thanks for getting this together and being so positive.

I have run e=mc23 or emc23.com since 1996 when I helped with the East timor tld: .tp .  In fact, www.emc23.tp was my very first site. These days, myself and Lisa, my partner, run emc23 as Joomla specialists, but we've always worked with a particular emphasis on education, community and grassroot organisations.

I think my main job to date has been as a networker. As chairman of the Irish Joomla User Group, it has been my goal to bring Joomla into the Irish education system. So over the past few months I've been writing emails and inviting various people within the IT and IT academia fields out for coffee.

Next week I begin teaching Joomla to VEC adult educators in a pilot project being run by myself and Ciaran Folan (also on this list), from the VEC in Galway, I will be teaching 12 tutors who will then each run a 10 week course a few times a year.

I am working with GerryMc (also on this list) on building a long term educational system using Joomla and other open source tools, to facilitate VEC tutors and students using the Joomla User Group Ireland and act as a liaison between students and potential work placements.
We are also investigating the idea of a Joomla school management system.

I have been in discussions with Bernie Goldbach (also on this list) re: graded Joomla courseware that might be used in the Limerick Institute of Education (and other institutes/education centres). We have also discussed Joomla related work experience placements for students.

I am building a game engine component for Joomla as a research and personal learning tool. I am a founding member of the #coderdojoGalway and will be traveling to various dojos across Ireland teaching joomla and the game engine as an educational tool.

Although these are all different projects, there is much crossover in scope with MissionV - who specialise in using OpenSim as an educational tool. I will be working with James Corbert (also on this list) and John Jennings (also on this list) on OpenSim / Joomla management tools and maybe some kind of OpenSim / Joomla Game Engine presentation layer using webgl.

Last, but not least, I have an interest in Open Data, semantic web, microtagging etc. and to this end I am interested in playing with import/export libraries and presentation libraries. In particular, I would like to see a Joomla plugin for SIOC as developed by John Breslin NUIG (also on this list).

This may seem like a lot but most of it is synergistic and will be easier as a group effort, some of it like a Joomla webgl interface for opensim might take a year or two, while creating a modular courseware system for Joomla might only take a few weeks. Anyways, I know it's a lot but I also guessing it's only a fraction of what we will come up with over the coming months.

Looking forward to working with you

Rob Stocker

[Jonathan Neubauer]

Hi Gerry,

Great to have you with us!

Sounds like you are already off to a great start!

We're running into many of the same dilemmas you folks are facing in trying to decide where Joomla! actually fits into an educational environment.

One of the things we've had to consider, like you mentioned, is "why Joomla!?" when it comes to deciding what to teach - and the concensus we seemed to come to after talking to many educators is that Joomla! definitely offers more capabilities than Wordpress, but still keeps the learning curve manageable for people new to web development - so it's a relatively ideal tool for this task.

I'm excited about the different classes you guys are already offering - I'd love to get in touch some time to chat about how you guys structured your courses, and what methods you found are the best ways to teach students new to this field.  As you've probably already seen, one of our primary goals right now is gathering resources, materials, and courseware that we can then present as a repository for other institutions around the world to take advantage of.

I look forward to working together!

[MissionV]

Great initiative all, and we very much look forward to working with
you Rob on OpenSim / Joomla management tools.

- James Corbett.
CEO
MissionV Education Ltd.