[TOS] POSSE Alumni Grant request - SIGCSE travel

[Grant Hearn]

Greetings all - 

A little while ago I posted a couple of questions about SIGCSE on this 
list, and thanks to Karsten I got the answers I needed.

I would like as a POSSE SA alumnus to request a grant to attend the 
SIGCSE 2011 conference in Dallas in March 2011. My reasons for 
attending the conference would be as follows:

1. We free and open source adherents in Africa are a little isolated from 
the mainstream at present; POSSE SA demonstrated that quite effectively. I 
would very much like to have the opportunity to meet and speak with a wide 
range of CS educators in the first world, and SIGCSE is the perfect vehicle 
for this. I am expecting to be able to get a good feel for and understanding 
of the state of CS teaching at present and the particular role that TOS has 
and fulfils in the mainstream. I feel that I need to have a good grasp of 
this in order to be able to return to South Africa and and evangelise on 
what I've learned. My intention in fact is to organise a small day-long 
conference at UWC (perhaps 2 days?) to workshop and expound on what I learn, 
with a view to seeing how we can bring ourselves into line over here in SA. 
We have the enthusiasm and the skills, but I think we need a proper 
perspective and a workshopped plan for the future. We also need to involve a 
wider audience, but to do this we need to have something worth while to 
offer them and I believe that I will be able to glean what I need from 
SIGCSE, and also be able to network a situation that will assist me with 
evangelising and establishing a wider and more effective TOS community in 
SA. In addition, I believe that I will be able to establish a route to 
further resources for TOS in South Africa during the SIGCSE visit.

2. My personal open source interest at present lies in the Android platform 
for the most part; I am hoping to be able to make contact with faculty from 
UW in Seattle (and others - there is a SIGCSE Android workshop I want to 
attend) where a lot of Android work is being done. In particular, I am very 
interested in the Open Data Kit - it has endless possibilites for South 
Africa and Africa in general, where mobile communications outstrip landline 
communications simply because of the lack of infrastructure to support the 
latter. I believe that Android has huge potential in the educational field, 
and I am engaged in a research project looking into delivery of content and 
services to students via Android devices. Android apps are not all that 
difficult to design and code, and I believe that I could through TOS teach 
the open source components to my students and get them to engage in the 
UWC Mobile University project accordingly, thus helping to contribute to their 
own education and the education of others across the continent.

3. I have in my mind the germ of an idea for the establishment of an open 
source open participation project in SA at UWC, which specifically works 
with the development of mobile applications for tertiary education - from 
standardised content authoring tools to delivery widgets. I realise that 
this is somewhat ambitious at this stage, but a journey of a thousand miles 
begins with the first step, as they say... I feel that I will be able to 
speak to people at SIGCSE that will be able to give me advice on how to go 
about starting such a project, and will be able to point me at human and 
other resources that might be useful to me.

I will of course be blogging about the SIGCSE experience - I am looking 
forward to that part because writing about something always helps me to get 
it all straight in my mind and to establish the right paths. Besides, I'm 
excited about getting some feedback from others about what I'm experiencing.
Also, I will be happy to speak at the TOS BoF at SIGCSE by way of an update 
on the POSSE SA alumni, and to give a report on the status of TOS in South 
Africa and where we are aiming to go in the near future.

The cost of the exercise will be as follows:
Airticket            1350
Accommodation 850
Conference fee   295
Workshop fees  130
Subsistence       200
Transport           100
TOTAL:          $2925

The costs as listed above represent the 'early bird' values. I am able to meet 
the visa costs and internal SA flights etc. myself on the South African 
side.

Thanks for taking the time to read this proposal.

Grant
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