Community groups, hosted by Facebook, will be involved in the all-day sprint on 22 February, to create the first release. Open Knowledge Foundation Ireland, Code for All Ireland, Open Data Science group, Code for Dublin, and several school teachers will lend their expertise. These individuals — who are government officials, elected politicians, entrepreneurs and civic activists — are using technology to contribute to making Ireland’s schools more transparent and accountable. Using local technical experts who volunteer their time to bring technology into the classroom with the aim to expand opportunities for all children.

The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) has pioneered this new technique for rapidly developing learning resources. The OKF recently released the Open Education Handbook, without license, in the public domain. The OKF believes that through community collaboration, we can all help spread educational materials to everyone, globally, not just to those who can afford it. A large proportion of schools are publically funded, so it seems only reasonable that tools used by the schools be released into the public domain.

OKF Ireland welcomes the progressive reforms announced by Mr. Ruairi Quinn, Minister for Education and Skills. Particularly, the optional Junior Cycle courses in computer programming and digital literacy, and hopes that the freely available textbook on Programming and Coding becomes a resource for continuous professional development. Both the technology community and school teachers are welcoming these new courses and looks forward in supporting our schools.

In order to be prepared to offer this new course, and introduce hundreds if not thousands of students to coding, schools need our help. Let’s crowdsource the best minds; and the best course materials; and volunteer to assist with implementing digital technologies in the classroom. Let’s make it an “open” process. Together we can build high-quality lessons with pedagogically sound underpinnings. We can aggregate the best on-line training resources into a world-class teaching guide. We can use the power of the Internet to connect school teachers to the vast experience of the community. Together this course can be the vanguard for open teacher resource. Introducing a level of collaboration to enhance and ease the way our teachers source material. Opening the process to allow for constant improvement. On 22 February, in conjunction with Open Data Ireland, Code For Ireland, and International Open Data Day, we will be gathering to build open educational resource, freely accessible, openly licensed resources to support this new course. This is your invitation, through collaboration with school teachers and industry experts can we build a truly useful resource. The community needs your help in ensuring that your local school is prepared to offer these new technologies. This is your chance to help.

Your are needed to source the best on-line resources. This include many successful introductory courses from around the world. We’ll be building from the best examples and utilizing state-of-the-art collaboration software, hosted by Open Knowledge Foundation. School teachers and industry professionals have been invited to ensure practicality and flexibility are built-in.

We’re calling it a Booksprint. But, it is a book unlike any textbook seen in school today. Built using collaboration software, using open source tools, in order to crowdsource from an unlimited pool of resources. We’ll be using a number of very cool technologies to facilitate real-time collaboration. Many of these tools have been used successfully to engage children and adults. You’ll walk away knowing how to engage a large audience, where to find help, and to quickly build teaching materials.

Please join us at the Februrary meetup being hosted by Facebook and organized in conjunction with Code for Ireland and Open Data Ireland.

In the meantime stay up to date and share ideas by tweeting:

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