Teaching

Around the world, several teachers are already giving Scribus courses. This section of the Scribus wiki is a ressource center for those teachers.

This project is still in the starting blocks. The first steps which are currently running are:

• finding a suitable licence for this section (the content should be open even for commercial use, but the authors of published textbooks should be able to protect they work from unfair competition).
• outline of covered topics.
• find teachers who are willing to cooperate.
• find free content which could be used as a starting point for the project
• find a way to manage translations

Licence

• cc by sa?
• GNU FDL

Topics

My main idea is to create "content blocks" which can be used by each teacher to create her teaching support.

FAQ

• Why not use the scribus official documentation?
• Why not simply set everything free?

Raw notes

main page: a table with all the topics in all the language, with the status, comments, raw material, ...

discussion with gregp

i'm not sure that lab manual is what i'm trying to describe.

I think the first step is to create a syllabus, a list or outline of covered topic topics

yes... that's surely a good idea...

ie, what are the tasks that one might do to learn Scribus in a comprehensive way

one difficult issue is also to find a licence for it

licence... as far as...

gregp_: the idea is to create some "files" a teacher could further edit to create her lecture notes.

yes, we have had, at least indirectly, some requests for things like this

the first steps i've done, have shown that licencing is a big problem in getting teacher to open their texts.

as it stands now, a teacher would have to spend a LOT of time learning all about Scribus, then formulate their own "coursework"

gregp_: exactly: and every teacher has to start from scratch (two weeks ago i've been mailed a new "coursware" about scribus: more than one hundred pages written from scratch!

grep_ ... is such a thing called a coursework?

... and i'm not allowed to share it.

coursework is a reasonable term, yet not really very specific

i've already contacted some lawyers specialised in open licences to find out if there is a way between open content (even for commercial use) and protection of the "coursework" from being "stolen" (looking up coursework in wikipedia... it doesn't really describe my goal...)

personnally, i think this describes better what i want to do :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courseware#Courseware Title: Educational software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (at en.wikipedia.org)

gregp_ is checking...

ok... the entry page will be called teaching... it was easy :-)

gregp_ puts on his christoph_s hat now...

well, you should stop writing any further content, in favor of creating an outline/syllabus

gregp_: the official documentation for scribus can't be used for it.

this is what we did for the manual and it was effective

The outline for the coursework will be different from the manual

the manual might be considered a reference for the coursework, but it's not the same, any more than an encyclopedia is a textbook

my main idea is to create "content blocks" which can be used by each teacher to create her (the teachers i know are all women...) teaching support.

we might start with a series of questions, like, "where should someone start with Scribus?"

gregp_: the scribus documentation is under a licence which imho is not suitable for the kind of work i ant to create

what is a good initial project

Ok, the licence is up to you

the licence must allow free commercial use.

I have to say I always have misgivings when people dive into the tutorial, which imo is not a good coursework

how about the GPL?

the gpl is not suitable for documentation. maybe the GNU FDL... but i don't really know its content.

gregp_ takes off the christoph_s hat, it's a heavy responsibility...

all you want is free use, yet acknowledgement, right? there are several licences for this

that is all *I* want. the problem is that teachers and schools need something else before being "allowed" to set free their content.

another thing to ask: what are the projects that teachers/schools would have an interest in for using Scribus?

the must be assured that the material won't be used for unfair competition

if you make it freely available....

gregp_: i personnally know of two curses which actually offer scribus lessons. the problem is not for me to make them available (by-sa is ok), but to get the teachers put their work in there!

I think we're using FDL for the manual, IIRC

and i want real teachers to use it and to contribute to it.

gregp_: for manual you mean the book which christoph is managing?

yes

the content from the manual can't be used for commercial goals withtout the explicit consnt from the team. it's not suitable for me.

" the content from the manual can't be used for commercial goals"... not sure what you mean

you can't publish a derived work from the manual and make money from it. printing lessons note and teaching on them in a private school is definitively commerce

i've already handled a real case between the manual team and somebody who wanted to translate parts of the draft ot the manual and use them in courses. it was no fun and lead to the teacher creating a brand new manual for scribus.

i really hope that the manual will be printed very soon, but from the discussions i head with christoph it's clear that the manual is not a base for what i want to achieve (and christoph knows about that :-)

... and i really hope to meet christoph soon: i think that it would make some discussions with a lot easyer!

we have had concerns about people poaching our manual and beating us to the press

as you must know, there are things in the manual you will not find anywhere else

i have no problem with that and i will buy the manual as soon as it is printed :-)

especially when one of its goals is to benefit the Scribus project, at this point we must protect it

I think once we get it published, it will be freely opened up for translations. The anticipation is that there may be few languages in which it will make monetary sense to publish it.

yes, i want the team to benefit from it.

one of the goals of your coursework can also take a cue from the manual and attempt to teach about fonts, typography, design, layout, and commercial printing

we hear from so many on the list who are quite clueless about all this, and this is integral to explaining why you need something like Scribus, rather than Word

gregp_: yes, definitively: the manual won't be only about scribus. it will about dtp with scribus :-) s/the manual/the teaching notes/

but, basically, the content in it, won't target end user (or ml readers) but teachers.

so it seems what it consists of to a large extent might be called lesson plans

yes... a part of it will be lessons plans. but maybe also screenshots, examples, ...

you may also need a teacher guide

have you discussed with teachers what they would like to do with Scribus?

this is very important

newsletters would be an obvious one, but there must be others

this might also be a reason for me to write more example scripts, which can be very useful

i've already taught some scribus lessons, i'm in tight contact with a graphist actually teaching scribus in adult schols... and i will be open to everything somebody wants to tell me! (i logging this discussion and i will try to integrate in my proposal all the things you are telling me)

the thing I like about scripts is that they can do a lot of tedious or boring work and allow you to focus on design at a higher level rather than assembly

example: I've used my image loading script to make a basic document from 50 or more images, something I would not want to do page by page

i have to break this very interesting discussion... i've put the whole discussion in the wiki page i've created. you can review and comment it, if you want (you'll get the address in a private message)... but you may want to wait that i give a form to all this input before putting anything in there :-)

mail an christoph

bei der diskussion wollte ich nicht über die lizenzierung des buches / der ofizielle dokumentation sprechen (ich musste aber zum teil darauf mich beziehen).

wie ich greg geschrieben habe, wird mein werk (falls er enstseht) ein andere form haben und andere ziele verfolgen:

• nur das rohmaterial wird zu verfügung stehen
• das zielpublikum sind lehrer und nicht scribus user
• es muss einfach sein, der inhalt zu übersetzten und zu updaten

mein nächstes schritt wird sein, eine lizenz zu finden, die apetitlich für den lehrern ist, und die pflege des inhaltes vereinfacht. zurzeit schwanke ich zwischen:

• cc by-sa (+gleich wie beim wiki, -schwierig kommerziel zu veröffentlichen)
• public domain (+kann im wiki und der dokumentation kopiert werden, +einfach zu veröffentlichen, - kann nicht vom wiki/docs kopiert werden, -schwierig den lehrern für den projekt zu gewinnen)
• eine bestehende lizenz mit ausnahmen (+optimale lizenzbedingugnen, -muss ausformuliert werden, -wahrscheinlich kein austausch mit wiki und docs)

auf der andere seite: klar, beim beispiel ging es um den fall "lorena" :-) . ich bin überzeugt, dass ihre bedürfnisse typisch sind für "schule", die "freie kurse" anbieten wollen und dass die probleme die doch aufgetaucht sind, wieder und wieder vorkommen.

diese schule / organisationen inverstieren geld in diese kurse und entweder

• dass die unterlagen nicht von anderen gebraucht werden können
• oder dass sie grenzlos die unterlagen benützen dürfen (vgl. veröffentlichung).

ich hoffe, dass mehre schulen das scribus als referenz buch empfehlen werden! das löst aber mmn nicht die probleme, die mit der erstellung von lehrmitteln verbunden sind.

zurzeit, glaube ich, dass ein bedürfniss gibt für die ofizielle dokumentation, für den wiki *und* für lehrmitteln. es ist bestimmt ein ziel, dass eine "cross pollination" entsteht, sie ist mmn aber nicht zwingend.

ah, noch etwas: ich war nie der meinung, dass schulen damit problemen haben, das buch zu gebrauchen! aber sie könnnen mmn grundsätzlich nicht (mit ausnahmen, klar :-) das buch nehmen, und ihre eigene kursunterlagen, damit frei entwickeln!

Ich hoffe, daß Du Deine Lehrerinnen davon überzeugen kannst, die Dokumentation zu nutzen und auch selbst unter dieser Lizenz zu publizieren. ich werde sicher probieren, die lizenz so zu gestalten, dass die texte aus den lehrmittel auch im wiki und in der dokumentation gebraucht werden können. ich fürchte aber, dass es unwahrscheinlich ist, dass texte aus dem buch im lehrmittel einfliessen (das einfachste grund ist, dass ich mir ein breiten authorenpool wünsche, was keine ad personam ausnahmen zulässt: wer würde dann entscheiden? aber authoren vom buch können ihre texte unter eine andere lizenz beisteuern!).

licence enforcement

Actually, what license you put on anything really doesn't matter if you don't enforce violation of the terms.

If someone infringes a copyright, the sky doesn't fall - but the copyright is evidence the plaintiff can use in a suit (or a deterent to litigation). If you don't file suit, nothing happens.

Same with infringing licenses - if you don't take any action, the terms of the license aren't in play.

So rather than worry about licenses, one should have a strategy for enforcement - or blow it off and get back to coding/writing/... ;)

Phil Mendelsohn