Alison

Yes, it would prevent the need for people to constantly replicate work
done by other people.

I will be preparing other materials to describe the objectives, legal
issues, processes, and opportunities. There are some things about site
development and maintenance that will be learning experiences for me,
but it shouldn't take me too long to figure some of them out. By July I
hope to be reasonably expert on the tasks that I need to learn but that
doesn't mean I can't start collecting and organizing materials, which
might help me start 'seeing' the structure for the site.

I will do what needs to be done to make it as easy as possible to
participate for those who prefer not to interact directly with the
site, but will also encourage people to learn the skills necessary to
work more independently.

To give a very, very brief idea, the project would be a site on which
are collected many materials useful for classroom presentation or
research, or patient education, would be freely available to anyone who
wanted to get them. People who might want to make revisions would
download the materials they think they can improve and then submit
their improvements back to me or ideally directly back to the website.
Hopefully, some people who are experts in the field would volunteer to
review and approve changed materials - assuring that they were actually
improvements, but the originals, and all versions up to the latest
approved version, would be maintained on the website and people could
choose the versions they prefer.

There are software programs that maintain version control and I need to
find out if there are some that would be suitable for the kinds of
files we are talking about - I know they will work with Word documents
- just don't know if they would work with powerpoint files - if not -
alternatives would be used.

I will also be scouring the web for people who already have materials
available on the web to ask them if they will submit their work to the
nursing-educator site. Lots of work to be done but I really feel pretty
passionately about the concept and think it would be a great thing to
contribute to nursing.

Thanks for the positive feedback - and if you have materials you want
to submit - or know people who you think would like to participate in
such an endeavor, just have them contact me off-list and also, please
feel free to send materials to me. I have to find out if there is some
sort of donation form I ought to collect - though doing so is not
standard in open source projects.

bear
--- alison rushing <alison_r0022@...> wrote:

> ggoooooooooooooooooooo bearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> sounds like a plan---but since i am somewhat computer illeterate--i
> need to se how this will work---it seems that it will keep all of us
> from haveding to 'reinvent the wheel' as it were---
>
> ali
>
> bear <tc_spirit@...> wrote:
>
> As many of you know, I am a software junkie and I particularly like
> the free, open source software: Linux, OpenOffice.org, concept
> mapping
> software that people around the world have freely contributed their
> time and talents to develop...
>
> For a long time I have been thinking that it would be a really nice
> idea to have a similar process for the free exchange and
> collaborative
> development of educational materials for nursing education. Of
> course,
> website hosting for such endeavors is very expensive because of the
> potential storage of huge quantities of files and the transfer of
> materials by large numbers of users as well.
>
> Well instead of bemoaning fate I finally got it together to submit a
> proposal to the largest open source software host - SourceForge.net.
> At first, I didn't think they would approve the project because my
> concept was too much 'data' and not enough 'software.'
>
> But as I prepared the proposal I realized that it was foolish to
> think
> of PowerPoint presentations, mp3 or mpeg lectures, Word class notes,
> lecture materials, papers, digital images, sound files, etc as data
> rather than 'software.' I rewrote the proposal to make it clear that
> I
> viewed these potential submissions as software. I also added in that
> I
> would encourage the offering of qualitative or quantitative research
> tools - programs people may have prepared or had prepared for them
> that really are 'software,' to the collection. I was still pretty
> pessimistic about the chances that it would be approved... But it
> seems that it was approved!!!!
>
> Now, as a group, though not as individuals, we have kind of trailed
> on
> the innovations in 21st century nursing front. But this opportunity
> to
> begin to share and improve educational, practice, and research
> materials is something I would like to think my Rogerian friends will
> choose to jump on. If we could be the ones who really kickstart this
> I
> think it could really put us 'out there,' as a group, in the world of
> 21st century nursing.
>
> How does this all work? Materials submitted have to be free of
> proprietary copyrights and restrictions and the originating
> contributor needs to be willing to have their original submission
> improved on. The objective is for people knowledgeable in specific
> areas to contribute either original materials or to offer
> improvements
> in materials others have contributed or improved on in the past.
>
> In short, let's say that I had a lecture on lung sounds, but all I
> had
> in it were descriptions of rales, crackles... You on the other hand,
> because of your clinical practice, have been able to make a bunch of
> sound files of various lung sounds. You revise the original
> PowerPoint
> presentation to incorporate sound files for the appropriate slides
> that give a good text summary while the sound files play. You submit
> the new file with WAV sound files embedded which is a great
> improvement over the original. Later on, someone else notices that
> the
> sound files are WAV files (very inefficient) and converts the sound
> files to mp3 files (very efficient). In the end, all of us benefit
> from being able to use the latest version of the presentation as do
> any other nursing educators, patient educators, nursing students, who
> might want to make use of these materials in whole or in part. When
> the original file was sent in, that submitter was noted and credited.
> When you added the sound files to the Powerpoint file, your
> contribution was noted and you were credited with your unique
> contribution. When the WAV files were converted to mp3 files that
> contribution was noted and credited as well.
>
> The objective of course, is not to seek credit for your contributions
> but to get the good feeling that comes from collaboration and an end
> product that is better than it would have been, if it had even
> existed, absent the opportunity for open source development.
>
> Now I have a lot to learn about managing a project such as this. I
> would like to think that some day hundreds or thousands of people
> will
> contribute materials and that thousands or tens of thousands of
> people
> will benefit. We all know there is a shortage of expert faculty and
> most new nursing faculty are left pretty much on their own to develop
> class lectures, learning exercises, handouts, powerpoints, lecture
> notes, explanatory papers, etc. Wouldn't it be great if they had a
> resource that was readily available, did not require permissions from
> publishers, was constantly being reviewed by other colleagues and
> improved upon? I personally think that one of the saddest things
> happening in education today is hiding valuable resources behind
> Blackboard and WebCT firewalls. But the other thing that really bugs
> me is when book publishers provide canned lecture materials that are
> either incorrect, have their stupid copyright notices and names all
> over it, or present them as graphical files rather than as far more
> efficient text files. You can't even make minor changes in those
> files
> without violating copyright restrictions and the graphical images
> cannot be changed at all.
>
> I am certainly going to start contributing my own materials and I
> really do hope that other people will be willing to join in. Guides
> on
> curriculum design and development, course descriptions, class
> syllabi,
> course reading lists, grading criteria are all things that every
> school struggles to develop and maintain. Getting materials to
> compare
> your own against or when doing reviews of curriculum could be so much
> easier with the kind of resources that SourceForge has made available
> to us.
>
> Eventually, when I figure all the stuff out about site management I
> will be able to describe how people can start making direct
> contributions. BUT, I am more than willing to start collecting and
> posting the material people are willing to submit.
>
> I cannot begin to tell you how big an opportunity this could be - the
> storage and transmission resources SourceForge is making available to
> us are, for all purposes, virtually unlimited. All we need to do is
> make good and wise use of them...
>
> To fully understand the process of Open Source development, please
> check out the copyright issues - here is a link to the GNU copyleft -
> the most common shared copyright provision in the Open Source
> community.
>
> http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/
>
> There is also plenty of room for other voices in this endeavor - I do
> not know what it should look like, how it should be set up, nor do I
> know how to review materials submitted and determine whether an old
> version or a new version is preferable. All I really know is that I
> think such a shared project could be useful and a lot of fun for
> people who have something to share and like sharing.
>
> From what I can tell, we could be the first educational project
> approved by them which would, in itself, be quite a plum. This site
> is
> not intended as a nursing theory site - it is intended as a
> comprehensive site for the development of nursing education and
> research materials across the spectrum of curriculum and practice.
>
> Anyone who wants to help in any way to get it moving and keep it
> moving is welcome to hop on board. Faculty, students, researchers,
> practitioners... I have a very fast internet connection and can
> receive email attachment files up to 20 MB in size or we can make
> arrangements for other transfer procedures such as CDs or scheduled
> file transfers. People who want to contribute materials are really
> needed but so will be people who will just spread the word, review
> submissions, suggest structures, reflect on the approach, and
> encourage the process.
>
> Remember: Opportunity knocks and the future calls - but you still
> have
> to answer, show up, and participate...
>
> Bear
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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