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Great topic.  The Institute for Local Government created Local Government Basics for Students, which may provide a backdrop in a civic/civic-tech curriculum.

In terms of decentralized calendar management, Google Apps is making big ins in education by providing free Google Apps.  At a local public charter school, the ability to share and manage calendars online made decentralized management possible.  Plus, the calendars have feeds available: xml, ical.

And in the spirit of accessible data, I just started working on a calendaring system at a local school.  I know a few eager students who'd like their calendar notifications via their iPhone/Droid, rather than in an email (in the campus email system, on a spreadsheet, each week).
Kevin - the DataSF project sounds interesting.  Any update?
Jon - do you think it might work as an After School Program?  I ask from a program standpoint.  Supplemental education is funded at a steady rate.
Also, there was a large "Character Education" grant that wa

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 2:06 PM, kevin curry <kmcurry@gmail.com> wrote:
Ok, tracking you now.  And educational endeavor.  This is interesting.  I
just got off a call w/ someone in SF who is kicking around an idea to
organize class/school-age projects using data from DataSF.org.

On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 2:22 PM, Jon Udell <jonu@microsoft.com> wrote:
> The school's own calendar would be a can of worms for the reasons you note.
> So instead I'd like to engage a teacher and a group of students in an
> exploration of the web presence of the community at large, w/respect to its
> various sources of public  event info. The students would learn:
>
> - The difference between HTML/PDF pages and calendar feeds
>
> - How to create calendar feeds
>
> - How to merge calendar feeds
>
> The process would teach key underlying principles of 21st-century literacy,
> including structured data, indirection, syndication. The outcome would be a
> prototype of a decentralized, network-based community calendar that works
> according to those principles.
>
> Admittedly you'd need an enlightened teacher to pull this off. If anybody
> knows one who'd be willing to try I'd love to connect.
>
> Jon
>
> PPS: re: http://manorisd.intand.com/ Yep, that vendor is one of the few
> that exports iCal. Our own school doesn't use them but a neighboring school
> does.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: kevin curry [mailto:kmcurry@gmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, November 05, 2010 11:36 AM
> To: citycamp@forums.e-democracy.org
> Subject: Re: [CityCamp Exchange] teaching civic data-gathering in schools
>
> Jon,
>
> Are you trying to establish a new grassroots practice at the teacher level?
>  In my experience the teachers are not the source of this data either.
>  Schools here in Virginia Beach have an administrative person compile and
> maintain the school's calendar.  How teachers' events end up on that
> calendar is by hook or by crook.  A teacher often emails the admin or stops
> by his/her office with the info.  The school admin is the PoC between a
> school and the school system.  The school principal is a key role player
> because they control the master calendar for the school.  That calendar
> includes things like PTA events, which are usually reported to the principal
> during PTA meetings.  Not sure if you are trying to find teachers who do or
> will create, maintain and publish their personal calendars.  Otherwise, you
> might want to reach out to principals.
>
> By the way, here's City of Manor's school calendar:
> http://manorisd.intand.com/
>
> The RSS feed follows the anti-pattern, but there are some interesting
> subscription options here:
>
>
> http://manorisd.intand.com/index.php?type=export&action=ical&export_type=now_to_infinity&limit=none&date_start=2010-11-05
>
> Manor Independent School District Superintendent Andrew Kim is forward
> leaning in the use of information technology for his school system.
>
> Best,
> Kevin
>
> On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Jon Udell <jonu@microsoft.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm looking for a few teachers to work with me on leading some
> > students through this exercise:
> >
> > ====
> >
> > Dear Mr. Jones,
> >
> > We're students at the Jefferson Middle School, and we're working on a
> > class project to improve the amount and quality of online event
> > information for our community. We noticed that the following
> > information is available on your website: [EXAMPLES].
> >
> > However, these events aren't published in a form that enables them to
> > show up automatically elsewhere -- for example, on the Herald's site,
> > or the Chamber of Commerce site, or on people's personal calendars. To
> > show how that can work, we have reformulated your information as a
> > data feed. You can see it merged together with other data feeds here:
> [EXAMPLE].
> >
> > This is just a demonstration. We're not the appropriate source for
> > your data, you are. As part of our class project, we're reaching out
> > to organizations like yours to show them how they can publish their
> > own event information in two ways: as text for people to read, and
> > also as data for computers to process and for networks to syndicate.
> >
> > We know that sounds complicated, but it's really just a way of
> > applying the ordinary calendar software that you probably already have
> > and use. May we contact the person in your organization who's
> > responsible for the events page on your website, and make a
> > presentation about how you could be publishing event information in a
> more useful way?
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Kayla Smith, Tim Miller, Samantha Williams Jefferson Middle School
> > Civic Data Project
> >
> > ====
> >
> > If you know a teacher who'd be willing and able to try this, please
> > invite them to contact me.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Jon
> >
> > (http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/10/a-lesson-in-civics-public-data.html)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Jon Udell
> >
> > About Jon Udell:
> > http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/2T6UMcmmQdKqMo5SVOdjm6
> >
> > View full topic, share on Facebook, Twitter, etc:
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>
>
> --
> Kevin Curry
> Virginia Beach, VA
> http://twitter.com/kmcurry
>
> Kevin Curry
> Virginia Beach
> About Kevin Curry: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/1QopOcbYAJLsQNo3nWFQWQ
>
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>
> Jon Udell
>
> About Jon Udell: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/2T6UMcmmQdKqMo5SVOdjm6
>
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