Sur la route de la Geek I'll still be a geek after nobody thinks it's chic !

MoziB2i

In France, we have a diploma named B2i, or Informatics and Internet Diploma. It's a diploma given to students in primary education, in secondary school and in high school, but also for adults. Created by french Ministry of national education, it contains 5 different domains, each containing different goals according to the level:

• Domain 1: taking a computer environment
• Domain 2: adopting a responsible attitude
• Domain 3: creating, producing, treating and exploiting data
• Domain 4: finding information and to making researches
• Domain 5: communicating and exchanging

If the basic idea is very interesting, it is often quite difficult to implement it for teachers. Here, the goal is not to train teachers specialized in B2i skills, it is the professors who make over their students and must ensure that capacity is well validated for each student. So the B2i is more often a cause of problems for teachers than a real enrichment of education instilled to students. Not to mention the reluctance of teachers in from of skills they mastered a little or not at all.

And Mozilla in all this? How could Mozilla support teachers in this task? If one reads the Mozilla Manifesto, you can find some answers:

• The Internet is an integral part of modern life - a key component in education [...].
• The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.
• The Internet should enrich the lives of of individual human beings.
• Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the Internet.
• Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability, and trust.

Well, okay, Mozilla could (should ?) do something to help teachers, but it's easier saying it than doing it. Where do we start first? Maybe creating a education's community with the aim to support teachers? Maybe making more interventions more frequently in schools? Maybe producing course content to validate the skills B2i?
To begin, this third option may be a solution called "low-hanging fruit". Creating a small group of teachers and volunteers who help Mozilla producing content optimized for technical B2i, but as generic and complete as possible, so that content can be reused anywhere in the world. It is necessary that the content is "hackable": any teacher in France or in the world should be able to modify it according to his need.

The question that remains in my mind is means to use. After some discussions during events or simply by talking around me, I got some contacts in the world of education who are willing to help in this task, but how to present the project to this heterogeneous group ? Which tool can be mastered by every volunteer ? A project Drumbeat ? A forum? A mailing-list?

While waiting to answer this question, I had fun with a tool that has been produced by Kaze, Timesheet. For the demo, post here it goes (but it's in French).