POSSE - Professors' Open Source Summer Experience
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0:01 - 0:04POSSE is Professors Open Source Summer Experience
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0:04 - 0:13and it's a one-week intensive bootcamp for professors designed to solve a problem
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0:13 - 0:20We realized a while back that many students who were getting involved in open source
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0:20 - 0:24weren't doing so as part of a formal schooling program.
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0:24 - 0:28And, at the same time there was a lot of value to
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0:28 - 0:30learning in open source.
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0:30 - 0:33There's a huge code base to experiment with,
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0:33 - 0:36a community of collaborators that can support
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0:36 - 0:38and encourage and aid learning. The problem was that
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0:38 - 0:42there were very few professors who were involved with
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0:42 - 0:46open source, and POSSE is designed to address that by
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0:46 - 0:50encouraging professors to, themselves, get deeply involved
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0:50 - 0:52in an open source community. It's not really
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0:52 - 0:55very different from developing software in another context,
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0:55 - 0:59except that in open source you've got the communications
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0:59 - 1:02and the community aspects. So, it's almost more cultural
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1:02 - 1:04than technical learning.
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1:04 - 1:07One of the participants from the first POSSE is a
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1:07 - 1:09professor with you at Seneca, Fardad.
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1:09 - 1:11Can you tell me a little about what he's doing now?
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1:11 - 1:15Fardad has taken a third semester programming course,
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1:15 - 1:20one of the core courses in our programming program
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1:20 - 1:25and added an open source component, almost as a
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1:25 - 1:30pre-open source course, so that students, rather than work
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1:30 - 1:33on their own little projects are instead collaborating
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1:33 - 1:37in small groups using open source methods and communication tools.
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1:37 - 1:43And it's really transformed that course. He's offered that
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1:43 - 1:46course for one full semester and he's into the second semester
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1:46 - 1:51and so far, the results are really quite astounding.
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1:51 - 1:56The student engagement is dramatically increased,
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1:56 - 1:59and the students are... pop into the IRC channel and you'll
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1:59 - 2:02see them late at night or on the weekends and hacking
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2:02 - 2:05away and by introducing open source concepts earlier
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2:05 - 2:10I think that we be able to prepare students to become
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2:10 - 2:13more deeply involved when they reach the later semesters.
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2:13 - 2:17One of the things that was interesting that came out
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2:17 - 2:20during the first POSSE was that, for me, I watched a lot of
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2:20 - 2:22the professors come in and go "We were thinking about
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2:22 - 2:25computer science senior capstone projects." But another
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2:25 - 2:30one was "Well, wouldn't this stuff be great for students to
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2:30 - 2:33learn how to write technical documentation?" Or if you're
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2:33 - 2:35studying human/computer interaction, have your designs
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2:35 - 2:39actually in a product by the time you graduate. Or if you're...
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2:39 - 2:44If you want to do QA when you get out, learn how to do
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2:44 - 2:47that on a real product that's shipping and you find the bugs
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2:47 - 2:51in. And so, broadening to a couple of other disciplines
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2:51 - 2:53and a couple of other teams that we know how to handle
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2:53 - 2:56very well, and in Fedora and in other open source projects,
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2:56 - 3:00that's going to expand the... instead of just reaching the
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3:00 - 3:03computer science majors and the computer science
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3:03 - 3:06department, we'll be able to get students that study other
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3:06 - 3:07things as well.
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3:07 - 3:11One of the Seneca students wrote the animated PNG
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3:11 - 3:14implementation for Mozilla. There was no animated version
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3:14 - 3:18of that except for the MNG format which was very rarely
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3:18 - 3:23implemented. So, one of our students, with the urging of
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3:23 - 3:28the Mozilla community, implemented a lightweight animated
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3:28 - 3:32format for that and since then that format's been adopted by
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3:32 - 3:36I think all of the major browsers.
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3:36 - 3:36Oh, wow!
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3:36 - 3:40So, there's more than 300,000,000 people directly using
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3:40 - 3:43that student's code and then many other people using the
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3:43 - 3:45Internet that have been impacted by it.
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3:45 - 3:48To go into an interview and be able to point to that and say
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3:48 - 3:51"Yeah, actually I wrote that software," or "I added a feature
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3:51 - 3:53to that software, fixed a bug, or wrote some documentation
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3:53 - 3:57for it," and then for the interviewers to be able to verify that,
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3:57 - 4:01and be able to see everything that they have done is
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4:01 - 4:03very powerful.
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4:03 - 4:05If there are professors that are interested in teaching
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4:05 - 4:08open source, are there other people that they can talk to about this?
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4:08 - 4:11The web presence that we created is called
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4:11 - 4:15teachingopensource.org and in fact the POSSE program
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4:15 - 4:19is accessible at http://teachingopensource.org/posse
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4:19 - 4:23So there's a fairly easy way for people to get in touch,
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4:23 - 4:26find out what's going on with the POSSE program, get
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4:26 - 4:29involved, and perhaps even host.
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4:29 - 4:31If professors are interested in doing something like that
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4:31 - 4:36at their school later on, then come, join the fun, say they're
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4:36 - 4:40interested, and can go from there.
- Title:
- POSSE - Professors' Open Source Summer Experience
- Description:
-
There are more professors than ever hoping to teach the open source development process to their students -- but working in the open source world can be a daunting proposition. Professors themselves have only a limited amount of time to learn about open source, and are often unsure about how, exactly, to get started.
POSSE (Professors' Open Source Summer Experience) is designed for these professors. Sponsored by Red Hat, the POSSE program is a week-long boot camp that will immerse professors in open source projects. Participants spend a week of intensive participation in selected open source projects, led by professors with experience in teaching open source development, in partnership with community members who have deep experience and insight. By the end of the session, participants should have a much better understanding of the workings of open source projects, and a strong network of contacts to lean on as they begin to bring students into the open source world.Learn more:
http://teachingopensource.com/index.php/POSSE - Video Language:
- English
- Duration:
- 04:51
metamel edited English subtitles for POSSE - Professors' Open Source Summer Experience | ||
metamel edited English subtitles for POSSE - Professors' Open Source Summer Experience | ||
Kevin Cole edited English subtitles for POSSE - Professors' Open Source Summer Experience |