User talk:KatieIreneC

Using Wikibooks
You already mention the possibility in your proposal, but I just wanted to comment that it would be really nice to use Wikibooks for this project. I think it fits with the scope of Wikibooks, see Using Wikibooks/Starting A New Wikibook.--Qgil (talk) 18:41, 29 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the tip, it does seem like a good fit. Guillaume also suggested this, and said he would check with Wikibooks to make sure this content was fitting. --KatieIreneC (talk) 20:02, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Code Scouts wants an Education Primer
The organization I work with, Code Scouts, would be very interested in The Tech Person's Education Primer. We're very much in the target audience you describe. We have a few academic advisors coming on board who may be working along similar lines. Drop us a line at adventure@codescouts.org and we'll see if we can connect you. --KevinTurner (talk) 02:41, 1 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Kevin, I'm so glad that you're interested! I'll send that email right away. I'm really interested in what your advisors will be working on and also the sort of feedback and experiences you've gotten from your members. Workshops/meetings with an emphasis on welcoming beginners seem to be having a lot of success around the country. I'm excited to see where Code Scouts goes! --KatieIreneC (talk) 06:11, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Awesome and much-needed project idea
Katie -- this was a project on my list to do this summer, but I'm even happier to see someone else do it (yay, I get to sleep more!) I'm a PhD student in engineering education and got into academia after a career in the F/LOSS hacking world, so nowadays I study educational psychology, curriculum design, faculty development, etc. and give talks like this one at PyCon, which might be up your alley. I also think http://teachingopensource.org professors would be interested in this work; you might join that mailing list, introduce yourself and this project, and ask them.

You have a good lineup of people to work with (Greg Wilson knows how to Get Things Done; we talked about Software Carpentry years ago when I was still working for Red Hat), and I'm glad you'll be at MSU's ed school -- one of the things a lot of hackers fall into is thinking they can read ed books/papers without joining ed communities of practice (not just technical education ones, or groups of hackers that are into education -- groups that do just education stuff, and have done it forever). It can be weird, slow, and frustrating to get deep into another discipline, but that's how you transform and bridge them.

There are some folks at Arizona State University (which is just a few miles from you) that might have relevant literature and background on the "we bridge education and technology" side of things. Drs. Micah Lande and Shawn Jordan are both faculty there with an engineering education background; they know me, so you can say Mel Chua said to get in touch. (They don't have direct experience in the maker/hacker movement, but they've read a bunch of things about it because they hope to research it, and it's interesting to see what we look like from the outside.)

Anyhow. I'd love to watch your project this summer, and perhaps link up a few times to see how I can help -- I can certainly point you towards (lots of) literature and research on teaching and learning (including teaching and learning in FOSS), and perspectives/paradigms, and people on the education side of the house. http://blog.melchua.com/contact/ has my contact info if you'd like to email, and hopefully we can figure something out. Good luck!

Mchua (talk) 14:09, 2 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Mel! I'm so excited that you're interested in this project---I really admire the fact that you've been trying to bridge this gap and I really liked your PyCon talk (I'm not sure how I didn't see it in person when I was at PyCon...). I guess this was the 0.5 of a thing you wanted to do :)


 * Thanks for all the advice and pointers. I will follow up with the people you refer once the project is confirmed (knock on wood). I think that your help directing me towards the right literature would be very, very helpful. I'm planning to get this information from the MSU folks, especially Cait, but I think the more resources I have to look through, the better. I do feel a bit pretentious saying that I will cover an entire field that I don't have a degree in, but I think the response shows that there is a lot of need for this project, and perhaps I can get things started and serve as a way to bring many of the people who are interested in this topic together.


 * KatieIreneC (talk) 19:11, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Like your project
This is not a very productive comment or anything(and not intended to be), but if MediaWiki had a "Like" button(which someone tried to implement before), I would like your project idea :) Good luck from a former OPW intern and enjoy!