Re: KDE Program for a FLOSS-oriented CS curriculum

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 8:46 PM,  <[email protected]> wrote:
> Sandro,
>
> Great idea, I love it. I do wonder what form you imagining this taking?
> are you thinking of a wiki book or something? or a site with lessons on
> it?

Well, I still don't have a definitive answer for that, but I think the form is
one of the critical factors for this succeed. People shoud be able to
easily search for a particular CS topic/subtopic and get one or more
KDE hacking/analysis scenarios, preferably described using a common
schema, kept along the whole "catalog". Suggesting some practices
and/or making the rationale evident would also be a plus.

Sandro

>
> Either way, as an educator myself, I have some pretty strong opinions on
> this subject.
>
> The idea of teaching open technology as a part of computer networking,
> or computer programming, or whatever, is an important one and one often
> dismissed as not relevant because people say things like "well I don't
> use KDE at my job, so it must be true that no one does". Fact is, the
> key isn't that we teach KDE, or even Linux: it's that we are teaching
> people how to learn. With closed technologies, there is by definition a
> limit to what students are able to learn. So we are implicitly teaching
> them to take certain things on faith; "don't ask WHY that works; you
> can't see the code or the configuration, so just Believe that it works."
>
>
> With open technology, wewe explicitly teach students to dig deeper, to
> learn everything, to understand anything.
>
> I personally find that one effective way to do this is to just teach
> what you are teaching, and use open technology to teach it. The
> class/lesson doesn't need to be about KDE or Linux/BSD, but it should be
> *on* KDE and Linux/BSD. The openness reveals itself when a student asks
> a question that you *can* actually answer, because it's open source.
>
> I have taught film, visual effects, Arduino, Python, animation, and
> video game programming with these principles, and it has yet to fail me.
>
> -seth
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> Subject: [kde-promo] KDE Program for a FLOSS-oriented CS curriculum
>> From: Sandro Andrade <[email protected]>
>> Date: Wed, April 29, 2015 2:10 pm
>> To: KDE Promo <[email protected]>
>>
>>
>> Hi there,
>>
>> I've been thinking about the process by which newcomers start doing
>> their contributions in KDE. In spite of some minor exceptions, I guess
>> undergraduate students are still the majority of such potential
>> contributors. However, different universities around the world vary
>> from zero to very intense incentives not only to the adoption but also
>> to focus their academic activities towards FLOSS applications.
>>
>> Certainly many possible causes for such zero adoption of FLOSS in
>> universities are out of our immediate control, but I think we have
>> chances for addressing another ones. What I've seen, at least in
>> Brazil, is that most CS professors are either not interested in FLOSS
>> or perhaps interested but completely unaware about how things work and
>> how they would correlate FLOSS with the subjects taught in their
>> courses.
>>
>> Cutting right to the chase, I was wondering if the availability of a
>> high quality and comprehensive "KDE Program for a FLOSS-oriented CS
>> curriculum" would help in any way the number of CS students doing
>> their work using KDE software. In practical terms, we initially would
>> have to agree on a common CS curricula (hopefully that is expected to
>> be easily identified) and then document, for each curriculum
>> component, the KDE technologies that would be either inspiring sources
>> for analysis or potential cases to apply, as contributions, concepts
>> related to that curriculum component.
>>
>> Some examples:
>>
>> - For a "Data Structure" and "Graph Theory" courses: we  would
>> document possible contributions in Rocs or the main implementation
>> aspects of Qt container classes.
>> - For a "Design Patterns" and "Software Architecture" courses: we
>> would describe how patterns have been used across KDE software and the
>> tactics adopted in outstanding architectures of applications like
>> KDevelop, Qt Creator, Plasma, KF5, and many others.
>> - For a "Software Quality" and "Project Management" courses: we would
>> explain the quality assurance process adopted in Qt and KDE
>> communities, along with the tools, standards, and procedures that
>> support the process.
>> - For a "Computer Graphics and Image Processing" course: we would
>> point out contributions possibilities in kdenlive, krita, and so on.
>> - For a "Compilers and Programming Paradigms" course: we could explore
>> the grantlee parser automata and/or the QML interpreter.
>>
>> The ultimate goal would be having a detailed set of guidelines about
>> how to adopt KDE as a central case study in CS courses. Obviously,
>> that would require some time investment and the help of those of you
>> who knows a lot about KDE solutions.
>>
>> By now, I would like to hear from you about two initial questions:
>>
>> 1) Do you experience this same scenario in your countries/universities
>> and consider this problem 'pervasive' enough to demand a global
>> endeavour from our community ?
>>
>> 2) Do you think such a 'KDE Program' is worth and would help in
>> fostering the adoption of KDE in universities and in alleviating some
>> initial contribution barriers ?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> --
>> Sandro
>>
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