Schools Working Group Update

[lila bailey]

Happy New Year to everyone!

Just wanted to let the community know that the Schools working group has completed it's first task: we have agreed upon a set of guidelines for giving out micro-grants for new and existing Schools. For now, the guidelines live in this Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uj_Cg5UP7iXk-nqHjyn6HfdX-dtnmiocHSuGY67qGOc/edit?authkey=CLPjxpAF&hl=en&pli=1#

Soon we'll put them up on the website so those interested in applying can do so.  It's going to be a rolling application process, so there's no particular deadline to apply, however getting a proposal in earlier rather than later is a good idea since the funds are limited and eventually will run out.

Next steps for the Schools working group will be to review any proposals that come our way and give out grants, so that we can meet another agreed upon goal, namely to find and nurture Schools within P2PU.

If anyone has questions, feedback, concerns, etc. feel free to contact me or ping the schools mailing list.

-Lila

[Philipp Schmidt]

yay to the schools group - great update and progress. P

[Alan Webb]

Thanks Lila!  SoSI will get our application together and to you as soon as we can!  (Please bare with us as we are both on the road this week and next)  Thanks for your effort getting this all organized.

Best,

Alan

[kfasimpaur]

Greetings, all. I am relatively new to P2PU, but not to open ed.
Having worked with P2PU for a few weeks now developing a course, I've
thought about how P2PU might apply might apply to other work I do and
immediately came to the idea of "schools" (school of business, school
of education, in particular). Then I found this group!

Anyway, it sounds great.

Question for you all -- is there an "application process" or something
similar for groups who want to start a school (or help coordinate a
collaboration on one) but who don't want/need to apply for a mini-
grant? It strikes me that a well-thought out plan similar to a grant
application would be the first step.

Regards,

karen

[Maria Droujkova]

On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:55 PM, kfasimpaur <ka...@k12opened.com> wrote:

Question for you all -- is there an "application process" or something
similar for groups who want to start a school (or help coordinate a
collaboration on one) but who don't want/need to apply for a mini-
grant? It strikes me that a well-thought out plan similar to a grant
application would be the first step.

I'd like to apply for "three hours of collective brainstorming" for example - a sort of concerted help, over two or three sessions. Though community calls do this for me.

What other... entities can schools apply for?

School of the Mathematical Future has six of its seven courses briefly described. We will move them to P2PU and get ready for the orientation in the next day or so.

http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/SuggestCourses

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

[Alison Jean Cole]

+1 for Ahrash's comments.

I still think this document needs a few tweaks - that formation of a school can possibly be done without funding, that 25k is the total pot for this entire endeavor, and that funding proposals to pay course organizers will be rejected, along with a few other clarifications so applicants have clear expectations.

ALISON
p2pu.org/users/alison

[Philipp Schmidt]

On 5 January 2011 21:05, Alison Jean Cole <alisonj...@gmail.com> wrote:

+1 for Ahrash's comments.

I still think this document needs a few tweaks - that formation of a school can possibly be done without funding, that 25k is the total pot for this entire endeavor, and that funding proposals to pay course organizers will be rejected, along with a few other clarifications so applicants have clear expectations.

my memory might be failing me, but I thought we would not formally rule out proposals that ask for funds to pay course organizers - but that it would not count in favor of the proposal? 

P

[lila bailey]

i had the same thought at philipp that we wouldn't completely rule it out, but that if that's the only thing they are asking for funding for, we would be unlikely to give a grant to pay one or more course organizers.

but i agree with the needed tweak, but would prefer to just deal with them when we put the document up on the website and we still haven't figured out where it's going to live...

[lila bailey]

welcome karen!  i think it would be great to find ways of connecting those interested in forming new schools with those who are further along in the process to give folks a better idea of what's needed/expected, but i think perhaps just a concise description of what it means to be a school and how to become one would be incredibly helpful.  we are still in the process of working those things out with precision within this working group, but i think it would be a good exercise to start putting pen to paper ... i'll start a new thread on that topic.

[Alison Jean Cole]

Yes, sorry - I guess my point is that as an organization, P2PU has done well at expressing our mission, but not really emphasized how it remains free. It's more about expectations and explaining how money reflects our values and what an applicant/school could expect to frame their uses around. Stating more distinct guidelines would be to help applicants be more successful, thats all. :-)

ALISON
p2pu.org/users/alison

[Philipp Schmidt]

* I think this information should live on the wiki in its own separate
page - which is linked to from the schools working group page.
* And we should definitely put a blog post out that explains all that.

* Schools Working Group page -
http://wiki.p2pu.org/w/page/33028516/p2pu-schools-working-group
* We should add a link/note to the overall working group page on
wiki.p2pu.org - http://wiki.p2pu.org/w/page/28949385/mailing-lists
* We could also add a link/note on the Get Involved page on p2pu.org
(but that page already referes to the above working group page) -
http://p2pu.org/get-involved

Best - P

[Stian Håklev]

Great work everyone, especially Lila!

I think the next thing coming up for this group is to figure out "how do you become a school"... I think it's also worth thinking about whether we want P2PU to only have two levels of structure - P2PU in general, and schools, or whether there should also be more like communities etc. I don't want to make it all complicated and bureaucratic, but I'm wondering if we want to keep Schools to something fairly high-profile, with a set team, own landing pages, logos, maybe outside partnerships, assessment etc... Whereas people doing cyberpunk courses might just want a mailing list, maybe help wikigarden the cyberpunk knowledge database, maybe help evaluate new cyberpunk courses etc...

Or maybe they can just all be schools :) Just wondering.

But yeah, we definitively need to figure out how schools are officially created. I'm still not sure if SoSI is an official school yet or not, and if it is, "how" it became one... I am totally happy that it is, but there should be some simple process.

Stian

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http://reganmian.net/blog -- Random Stuff that Matters