As the name implies, “service-learning is an educational approach that combines learning objectives with community service in order to provide a pragmatic, progressive learning experience while meeting societal needs” (Wikipedia). When you add the “community” part to that definition it changes to, “about leadership development as well as traditional information and skill acquisition” (Janet 1999).
How does this apply to Open * communities?
Simple! Community service learning is an ideal way to get middle/high school/college students to get involved within the various communities and understand the power of Open *. And also to stay active after their term of community service learning.
This idea came to me just today (as of writing, Nov. 30th) as a thought on what is really Open *. Not the straightforward definition of it but the the affect Open * creates. As I stated on my home page of my site, Open * creates a sense of empowerment. One way is through the actions that create skills and improvements to those skills. Which skills are those? Mozilla Learning made a map and description to these skills on their Web Literacy pages. They are show below also:
Most of these skills along with the ways to gain these skills (read, write, participate) can be used as skills to worked on for community service learning.
As stated above, community service learning is really the focus of gaining skills and leadership skills while (in the Open * sense) contribute to projects that impacts the society of the world. This is really needed now as there are many local and world issues that Open * can provide solutions too.
I see this as an outreach program for schools and the various organizations/groups such as Ubuntu, System76, Mozilla, and even Linux Padawan. Unlike Google Summer of Code (GSoC), no one receives a stipend but the idea of having a mentor could be taken from GSoC. No, not could but should. Because the student needs someone to guide them, hence Linux Padawan could benefit from this idea.
Having that said, I will try to work out a sample program that could be used and maybe test it with Linux Padawan. Maybe I could have this ready by spring semester.
Random Fact #1: Simon Quigley, through his middle school, is in a way already doing this type of learning.
Random Fact #2: At one point of time, I wanted to translate that Web Literacy map into one that can be applied to Open *, not just one topic.