[TOS] Seneca update from ctyler

[Mel Chua]

Just had a meeting with Chris Tyler about Seneca happenings, log at 
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/teachingopensource/2010-10-18/seneca_update.2010-10-18-19.42.html.

High-level points: Under the CDOT umbrella, we have several things 
happening: (1) courses (2) applied research (3) events. So taking each 
of these in turn...

== courses ==

Seneca has a course called OSD/DPS, their "traditional Open Source 
Development course." IIRC - Seneca folks please correct me if I'm wrong 
- this is an upper-level class for students who already know software 
development, and is aimed at getting them into FOSS communities. This 
has been going for a while and it's stable and is actually what the 
first POSSE curriculum was based on.

Fardad, from POSSE 2009, started teaching his intro C++ classes as a 
"pre OSD/DPS class" using the tools/practices of FOSS communities so 
that intro-level students would be more prepped for success in OSD/DPS 
when they hit it, and more interested in taking it. He started teaching 
this way in the 2009-2010 school year, so now in the 2010-2011 school 
year we are just starting to see Fardad's open-source-aware students hit 
the next level of classes and we're about to find out if it made a 
difference.

Student counts are - for software development, 12 OSD/DPS students and 
around 50 GAM (game development) students. For networking and admin, 
Chris has 28 students in SBR (Software Build and Release) course working 
within open source projects.

== Student projects for courses ==

SBR students are working on projects about 3/4 Fedora and 1/3 Mozilla 
(with the overlap being a Fedora-Mozilla project), see 
http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Fall_2010_SBR600_Project_Table.

"So we have a pretty keen group in SBR this semester. Some are working 
with Jesse Keating on adding unit tests to fedpkg, some others are about 
to start work with James Laska on Fedora AutoQA, we have a project to 
produce a Fedora-compatible nightlies/beta repo for Mozilla, and there's 
a Mozilla QA framework project too that's tied into buildbot, plus a 
number of Fedora-ARM projects, including device support for certain 
video and wireless systems, benchmarking thumb and v7 support, and doing 
some infra work on our build farm."

== Applied research ==

"In terms of applied research, we now have 12 employees -- co-op 
students, part-time students, and grads -- working on various projects 
partnered with external commercial partners. This includes the 
processing.js work, popcorn.js, XBpointcloud, fedora-arm, and NexJ Express."

"Basically, this structure allows us to pursue open source things that 
are beyond the scope of what we can do in the classroom, and it feeds 
back into the classroom in a positive loop. Development of mentorship 
capacity, developer-in-residence type of relationships, etc. Having the 
paid researchers here provides continuity for larger projects that we 
couldn't develop with semester-to-semester courses. It also provides 
co-op opportunities, and a chance for students to work closely with a 
larger number of people that are closely involved with upstreams."

== Events ==

Seneca is active in hosting and running events, particularly around 
Toronto Open Source Week (http://opensourceweek.ca/, going on right 
now). Right now:

* Level Up Game Jam (computer game development - "This will spotlight 
the open web technologies we've been developing, including WebGL 
libraries, web audio, and so forth. We haven't explicitly targeted the 
extinction of Flash, but almost anything that needed flash previously 
(and a lot more) can now be done with fully open technologies. It also 
leverages our large GAM group and ties in to other schools within the 
college 20:06:55 <ctyler> (School of Communication Arts, Animation, etc)."
* hosting a FLOSSmanuals sprint
* Other events are happening as part of Toronto Open Source Week (it's 
another TOSW acronym, folks!) that Seneca's not hosting, like AndroidTO, 
a VanillaForums event, and a FreeGeek meetup, so Seneca is an active but 
not exclusive contributor to those events.

FSOSS is the big one, the next year's FSOSS is the 10th anniversary so 
we should do a big push for that (TOS, anyone interested?)

That's all, hoping for summaries like this from other schools as well :) 
and notes from others from Seneca in case there's something Chris and I 
missed (or I misinterpreted!)

Thanks,

--Mel