[TOS] Textbook/Survey

[Karsten Wade]

On Sun, Apr 04, 2010 at 03:36:59PM -0500, Eli wrote:

> I'm not sure if you wanted me to email you directly but I thought it
> would be best to start here. I took the survey you mentioned about on
> the List. It was a pretty good, easy. What happens next? Are we going to
> get some results from it?  I'm really getting into the open source
> way. 

Yeah, I don't know exatly when to expect the Fuqua School of Business
survey I sent out about[1].  It might be a few academic cycles,
depending on factors such as level of peer review needed and if it's
part of a larger whole that is still being worked on.

There are a few channels of communication open to the researchers, I
expect we'll hear more from that direction, as it comes.  Greg
DeKoenigsberg might know more about that already.

[1] http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/docs/2010-April/011976.html

> On another note........I have been reading the textbook. It's very good.
> Even though I don't code or anything, it is very good. Maybe some day
> I'll get into it. Anyway I have found a couple of places that could use
> some tuning up(bugs). What would you like me to do with them? That is if
> you haven't already noticed them!!! 

It's possible, since I still have changes in my local repo that are
not checked in to Subversion (bad me!)  If these are bugs in the 0.8
HTML or PDF I published here:

http://quaid.fedorapeople.org/TOS/Practical_Open_Source_Software_Exploration/

We want to know about tham.

Shamefacedly, we don't yet have a bug tracking mechanism.  I'm pushing
on that, because I really should be pointing you there. :)  In the
meanwhile, if you can confirm it is a bug in the HTML, PDF, or wiki,
let us know what they are via this list.  Some may be already known
and set to be fixed for the next release (0.9), some might be new.  If
they are fixable, I am going to encourage you to get a wiki account
and make the fix directly in the upstream source (which is the wiki.)

> So, I have been really enjoying the ready and wanted to do what I can to
> help. After you and laubersm "schooled" me last week, I have been hard
> at it doing what I can to contribute. :)
>
> Let me know if there is any way I can be of help, and what happens
> next. 
> Thanks for the great textbook!!!

Thanks!  I've been having a lot of fun the last few months, writing
and mentoring with all the Fedora Docs tools, it's been a while since
I've been helpful in that regard.  It's good to see you picking things
up so quickly.  We really hope the textbook provides a way to get more
people realizing how straightforward it can be to participate.

We're going to want more feedback on the 0.8 version as we write the
0.9.  We also need to make our plans for 0.9 more visable so readers
can learn for themselves if their issues are going to be addressed.
The book is good for self-learners, so if you know students who might
be interested in testing the textbook while trying it out for
themselves, that would be great. (Clearly I think it could work for
cross-discipline - arts, marketing, science, etc.)

Consider for yourself using the textbook in guiding what you do in the
Fedora Project.  You might want to blog about applying the exercises
to Fedora, in effect writing up your customization of the exercises.
This would start us toward source material to make a project-specific
textbook that the Fedora Projet could put forward.

- Karsten, always scheming

PS: With each exercise being an individual <section> in the XML, we
could have those actually XIncluded from individual XML files.  This
gives an easy way to customize a version of the textbook -- just
duplicate and customize a set of XML files, change the <xi:include...>
tag to pull the customized files, and rebuild the book.  (Or cheat and
use the same filenames.)  For Fedora, we'd change the brand package
and have an instantly customized book.

-- 
name:  Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener
team:                Red Hat Community Architecture 
uri:               http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki
gpg:                                       AD0E0C41
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