Why should we encourage student OSS participation?

We tend to remember our computing education to be very technical and limited ininteraction with other peers (unless it was that dreaded group project!).
But lets imagine how this could be improved to help future students get a
better sense of what it’s like in a realistic development environment –
without scaring them off!

In this talk we are going to explore how teaching students about participating in open source software projects can help build up their technical & social skills to venture out into the professional world. We discuss how merely engaging with others in online communities can have a positive impact on their interest in computing and potentially the project itself. We also talk about some of these projects they can explore (including PHP), the materials available to help teach faculty how to incorporate this into their curriculum, and how you can get involved in encouraging the younger generation to participate and learn from the open source projects we may often use daily.