Interesting discussion on Twitter about FCA and Teaching FCAD in schools

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ragohix769
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Interesting discussion on Twitter about FCA and Teaching FCAD in schools

Post by ragohix769 »

After #ElonMuskBuyTwitter I'm no more on Twitter, that's really enough :-(
=> Now you can find me here on #Mastodon: https://mastodon.uno/@opensoul - I hope more people do the same :-)
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Kunda1
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Re: Interesting discussion on Twitter about FCA and Teaching FCAD in schools

Post by Kunda1 »

Reminds me of a discussion where Ton from Blender talks about trying to get Blender in to school curriculums

https://twitter.com/FreeCADNews/status/ ... 4697753603

Looks like we'll need $ for bribing the right people :mrgreen: #JokingNotJoking
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KAKM
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Re: Interesting discussion on Twitter about FCA and Teaching FCAD in schools

Post by KAKM »

I don't know if the way schools/universities operate elsewhere is significantly different, but I know in the US teachers generally have substantial autonomy for how they teach the things they're required to teach. So if you can convince them that open source software is worth using, they'll use it–especially given that open source generally doesn't have licensing costs and schools here are underfunded more often than not. And teachers are constantly trading ideas on how to teach better, more easily, etc. So if you get a few folks to fall in love with something (e.g., a software), then it'll spread pretty effectively through word of mouth.

So if you wanted to get more open source tools into education, I would suggest applying your energy at the individual teacher level. The issues that I think would need to be addressed if you were to try to persuade teachers to use open source CAD over proprietary would be:
  • If they already have a commercial CAD they use at the (greatly discounted) educational license cost, why change? Creating new lesson plans is a lot of work, and they need to learn it themselves too.
  • Teaching a software that's widely used in industry gives a direct, clear benefit in getting jobs later. How do you outweigh the fact that a resume missing <proprietary software of choice> is likely to get discarded before a person ever sees it?
  • Have they even heard of it? FreeCAD doesn't advertise, and personally, I only found it because I was actively looking for open source CAD.
  • What are the resources for teachers wanting to use it? Are there example lesson plans? Formal training that can count towards continuing education requirements? Are there good resources to get teachers started learning it?
  • Is it powerful enough to do the things they want it to do? Is its technical ability better than commercial CAD? The inherent benefits of open source software aren't very relevant to someone who doesn't have the ability to code–it might as well be closed source if you don't know how to read the source code.
  • Is it easy enough to use that the students won't get frustrated immediately or have to constantly ask questions and clarifications? How hard is it to identify what mistake a student made and how difficult is it to go back and fix?
  • Can it run on the rickety old hardware and software that the school has access to?

So no bribery needed at that level, and probably not at the level of individual districts, either. Now, if you want to get something implemented at the state or national level, a bit of strategic cash application might come in handy...
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adrianinsaval
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Re: Interesting discussion on Twitter about FCA and Teaching FCAD in schools

Post by adrianinsaval »

on the contrary this reminds me of some tweets by the folks at krita were schools were asking them to sign some bs declaring they'll protect the children's privacy before they could allow the use of the software in the schools.

Edit: found it https://twitter.com/Krita_Painting/stat ... Pxpgw&s=19
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