00:02:29 #startmeeting 00:02:29 Meeting started Sat Mar 3 00:02:29 2012 UTC. The chair is mchua. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 00:02:29 Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic. 00:02:35 #chair kwurst sdziallas heidie ghislop 00:02:35 Current chairs: ghislop heidie kwurst mchua sdziallas 00:02:43 #meetingname SIGCSE 2012 TOS workshop 00:02:43 The meeting name has been set to 'sigcse_2012_tos_workshop' 00:02:49 #topic Getting started 00:06:28 We're getting started -- not all the registered attendees are here, but that's okay. 00:10:40 #topic introductions 00:10:53 Kristina - Union College, POSSE alum 00:11:15 Joe -- Carnegie Mellon, runs "Technology Consulting in the Global Community" 00:11:30 Sambit -- Fayetteville State -- biotech & mobile 00:11:47 Jay -- Stanford, just started getting students involved 00:12:00 Alyce -- Kalamazoo, encourages students to use, but hasn't gotten them contributing yet 00:12:12 Michelle -- Drexel, mainly a user of FOSS 00:12:34 David -- U Penn, has used FOSS for years, sees a FOSS project heading in the wrong direction and wants to get in and fix it 00:12:48 Myungsook -- California Lutheran, wants to get started contributing 00:13:03 Dorothy -- North Carolina A&T, uses FOSS tools in classes for 3-4 years but not contributing yet 00:13:35 (feel free to help us take notes here!) 00:13:50 #info Lots of people have used FOSS, and had their students use FOSS in classes, but very few have gotten students to contribute. 00:14:57 Going over the schedule. 00:15:01 #link http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/SIGCSE_2012/Workshop_materials 00:15:26 #link http://openetherpad.org/TOSworkshop2012 00:16:47 thx 00:17:30 Greg is covering the history of FOSS 00:17:58 #info The average FOSS project has 1 contributor. 00:18:11 #topic What is FOSS and TOS 00:18:15 #info 50% of FOSS contributions are by employees paid to do it. 00:19:20 * sdziallas is also live tweeting this... 00:23:01 Mel is recording "FOSSisms" on the wall... 00:23:35 #topic FOSS Fieldtrip 00:25:47 #link ohloh.net 00:26:04 #link http://ohloh.net 00:26:35 #link http://sourceforge.net 00:27:33 sdziallas: we have a problem -- too many connections to freenode 00:27:33 Heidi is looking at "disaster" projects on Sourceforge 00:27:36 sdziallas: can you come out here? 00:27:46 sdziallas: i'm out of ideas 00:27:51 oh, yes. let me come over. 00:28:29 Heidi is narrowing the choices by status 00:28:55 * sdziallas signing off here. 00:29:23 Heidi has found a lot of projects that are in the "beta" stage 00:31:36 Heidi is now showing Ohloh and looking at the Cheese project 00:33:21 welcome myungsook! 00:33:56 "Decreasing year-over-year activity" may not be a warning sign - it may just mean that the project is becoming stable. 00:34:21 #info "Decreasing year-over-year activity" may not be a warning sign - it may just mean that the project is becoming stable. 00:41:02 #info Ohloh will let you compare (up to) 3 projects to each other 00:42:00 #info "updated about x hours ago" means the Ohloh data, project commmits 00:43:24 #info "updated about x hours ago" means the Ohloh data, *not* project commits 00:44:48 kwurst: I put a list of some tools in the etherpad, in case it helps for your section. 00:45:24 #info You need to hit enter after each project name you put into the Ohloh project comparison 00:46:41 The workshop attendees are exploring Ohloh on their own... 00:51:34 Mel is wallpapering the room with giant post-its 00:55:08 A question from myungsook -- for someone who's just getting started, would you choose to contribute to a large project, or a small one? 00:55:31 my response: I'd personally choose a large and active one, because they will be more used to getting new people started and will probably have more documentation/tutorials for you. 00:55:45 (all those people that make it a "large" project must have been newbies sometime!) 00:56:01 And a large community has more people to help 00:56:02 #info Mel's recommendation: choose a large project (not a small one) for your first community. 00:56:05 heidinow: +1 00:56:19 note for folks following in chat -- I've also listed these in the etherpad. 00:56:24 http://openetherpad.org/TOSworkshop2012 00:57:09 kwurst is talking about the usefulness of list archives 00:57:18 The archives he's talking about: 00:57:20 They're a really good resource for finding the answers to questions 00:57:20 #link http://lists.teachingopensource.org/pipermail/tos/ 00:58:11 kwurst is touting the joys of IRC. Yeah! 00:58:48 #idea Use IRC for "office hours" 00:59:06 Question: is there a one-line command for starting meetings? 00:59:30 Answer: Yes, right now we are using Fedora's bot (zodbot) 00:59:34 #link http://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Zodbot&oldid=262493 00:59:51 #info You can use bots on IRC to help you keep track of meeting notes (the above link is an example with documentation) 01:03:05 IRC provides a great log of student meetings 01:03:29 IRC logs also provide great examples for students of both professional behavior and collaborative problem solving. 01:04:03 #idea IRC logs of open source project meetings provide good artifacts for class discussion of professional behavior 01:04:42 #info "Why use this old-fashioned 80's technology?" Because that's where everyone is, *and* low-bandwidth internet connections in some parts of the world means it's the only one that's equally accessible by all. 01:04:55 #info "IRC is the water cooler -- it's where people who know things hang out." 01:05:21 #info Some projects have their version control systems automatically make announcements into an IRC channel. 01:05:35 #info Holding office hours on IRC means students can also see and answer each other's questions. 01:05:53 Question: for office hours, do you have your own IRC channel, or do you use a project's existing channel? 01:06:30 Answers vary -- you might want to create a "sandbox" channel for your class for them to learn syntax. 01:06:47 IRC also used for cross-institutional collaboration, so students from different schools working on the same FOSS project have a way to hang out in realtime. 01:07:10 Talking about Etherpad. 01:07:17 mchua is the best logger! 01:07:18 #info Etherpad is a brower-based collaborative text editor. 01:07:29 sdziallas: you should talk about how your CS class took notes on it. 01:07:52 heidinow: (tell sebastian since he's not online -- to mention the FoCS notes) 01:08:14 #info people have etherpad instances hosted that you can try 01:08:17 #link http://openetherpad.org 01:12:24 I missed the meaning of the sole circle on the wall poster. 01:27:34 #topic break 01:28:16 Everyone is eating cupcakes and editing EtherPad 01:30:56 #topic FOSS culture principles step-back 01:31:53 We are now deciphering Mel's wallpaper designs 01:32:20 #action Take photos of the walls and post them on the wiki 01:33:45 Mel has been identifying the FOSSism through out the first part of the workshop. 01:34:16 Now she is explaining what these mean and how they relate to education. 01:36:43 #info In FOSS, the feature set is continually being developed. 01:37:14 #info A release involves first making a set of features happen and then deciding which features in that set should be included in the release. 01:42:50 Mel is filling the big empty circle 01:43:53 Example of a Roadmap (OpenMRS): #link https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/docs/Road+Map 01:44:01 The circle represents the amount of time spent on projects 01:44:39 New code is a small slice, more is old code, but ~75% is communication 01:45:13 Climbing the "contributor mountain" 01:46:43 #link http://quaid.fedorapeople.org/TOS/Practical_Open_Source_Software_Exploration/html/sn-Introduction_to_Free_and_Open_Source_Software-Climbing_Contributor_Mountain.html 01:47:32 The link above is from the Teaching Open Source textbook: Practical Open Source Software Exploration 01:48:28 #link http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/Textbook 01:50:31 Student reluctance to admit lack of knowledge can be a barrier to moving from user to seeker. 01:52:02 The solution(?) is to be a broken record - keep reminding them to ask the community when they get stuck 01:55:02 It is important for OS community to recognize this issue and not contribute to it by being snarky when newbies post dumb questions - I have seen this numerous times and its a killer 01:58:28 #topic Course examples (Greg, Heidi, Karl, and Sebastian - Mel leads backchannel notes) 01:59:14 kwurst has done two FOSS courses 01:59:23 Freshman survey course on openness. 01:59:44 Tried to have students create their own community using a wiki. 02:00:03 Then worked on editing Wikipedia 02:00:22 This worked generally well, except students didn't fully understand rules. 02:01:25 Also did a software development course. First time students self-selected projects but there could have been more communication with the community. 02:01:37 Second time around (now), entire class in one project. 02:02:17 Easier to interact with single community and students have a vested interest in listening to other students discuss progress on the project. 02:04:42 heidie has taught software development twice using FOSS 02:06:00 The community is doing most of the educating, Heidi is mostly making sure that they are staying on the right path and not asking stupid questions 02:07:33 heidie took her students to the Gnome summit in Boston. They met about 100 of the main Gnome developers. 02:08:38 Her students proposed an unconference session on the caribou keyboard that they wanted to work on. Their session was selected, and got a private hour-long tutorial session from a developer. 02:10:27 This may require that you be more flexible in your schedule to be opportunistic when opportunities arise 02:12:06 ghislop Drexel started with an independent study, then moved on to a class 02:13:23 kis also started with a club that met every other week, I think 02:13:24 #link http://www.xcitegroup.org/softhum/doku.php?id=f:assignments Beginning activities, some of which are useful for students with no background in computing 02:13:30 You can have freshman/sophomore students do the FOSS field trip and see how a community works - no coding necessary 02:13:52 #info lurking is a great way to start learning -- see how your students understand what they're observing 02:14:04 that's right. It was a club for female computer science students and other female students interestedin computing. 02:14:44 kis: ooh, there's that idea of how FOSS (especially humanitarian FOSS projects, or helping a local nonprofit use FOSS) can help broaden participation. 02:14:45 And we took a break because I was on sabbatical. But we are going to start again because the students came and asked for it :-) 02:15:02 kis: awesome! any chance we can get the students to blog or something? ;) 02:15:07 mchua: ping 02:15:17 #link http://www.xcitegroup.org/softhum/doku.php?id=g:getting_started Getting started... 02:15:35 That's a good idea. I will encourage them to blog. 02:15:37 ianweller: pong 02:15:55 #link opensouce.com 02:16:00 mchua: would it be off-topic for the meeting to quickly talk about tos.o 02:16:00 #link http://www.xcitegroup.org/softhum/doku.php?id=s:initialconversation Actual student conversation getting started in a project. 02:16:18 kis: matt jadud had a nice writeup on that at http://sububi.org/2009/07/27/the-busy-students-guide-to-project-blogging/ 02:16:22 #link http://sububi.org/2009/07/27/the-busy-students-guide-to-project-blogging/ 02:16:49 kis: they can set up free wordpress blogs, and then we can get them on Planet TOS if you like 02:17:12 kis: i spent most of my semester helping my grad school classmates set up blogs, so I'd be happy to help anyhow I can :) 02:17:43 Heidi: "Do the community part first, do the code part second." 02:17:48 "as academics, we want to solve the problem." 02:17:56 kwurst: struggling to think of a good way to summarize what heidi's saying 02:19:02 "what I've found is that if I start my students with the technical part, they don't get involved with the community" 02:19:17 "but if they do the community first, then the code part goes faster and they can get help when they need it" 02:19:22 #info Do community first, code second. 02:20:49 Question: if students are working on small bugs -- why haven't these small bugs already been fixed? 02:21:02 Answer: core developers don't have time to fix them -- they're going after the big ones. 02:21:20 #info core developers are usually too busy to fix the tiny easy bugs -- which means they're left undone for students to do (and get great gratitude for!) 02:21:35 #topic Course workshopping (individual instructors lead small groups) 02:54:04 #topic wrap-up 02:55:16 heidie is mentioning TOS 02:55:23 #link http://teachingopensource.org 02:55:59 Join the teachingopensource list: 02:56:38 #link: http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/TeachingOpenSource_Mailing_List/Join 02:57:50 #action Post these minutes to the wiki 02:58:12 #action Email the minutes links to the attendees 02:58:25 #action Email the wiki link to the attendees 02:59:13 #action Organizers will update the wiki page with more resources 03:00:11 #endmeeting