necc

This is a birds of a feather session focused on using Open Source software in schools. Sharon Betts from Maine presides, uses Web 2.0 and open-source products. “You don’t buy anything but the hardware.” Mr. Fitzgerald, 20Monkey, using Drupal with schools. Steve Hardagon, running the open-source pavilion at ISTE. The session has some classroom teachers, IT, and coordinators. Folks want ideas for the classroom. Many folks do not yet use open source programs, but many are interested. A select few are heavy users of Open-Source, and are great resources.

Some open-source examples are Moodle, Audacity, Celestia, Dia, Drupal, Firefox, FreeMind, FIMP, Nvu, OpenOffice.org, Scibus, TuxPaint, and Ubuntu Linux.

eduUbuntu comes with free elementary software.

FLOSSed conference is an event you can attend to learn more about OpenSource in schools.

A discussion ensued regarding the “free” aspect of open-source software. “Free” cost to distribute, but you may hire someone (an expert) to install the software. There’s another “free”–to customize, share, and manipulate.

FLOSS - free/libre open source software. A compromised term to describe the “freedom” in OS software. There is SIS and ePortfolio software being developed that can be used in the educational organization… other software is being developed to work in tandem with pre-existing suites, such as Drupal or Moodle.

Many schools begin using OS software because of the cost, but many are finding some apps are best-in-class options.

Distrowatch.org is a website that tracks Linux distributions if you want to start with Linux.

Nvu (now Composer) is a good analogue to Microsoft Front Page.

Hardagon believes we should be teaching PHP, MySQL and Apache skills to give kids employable skills.

Getting started? Go to an OpenSource matrix site to see examples. Focus on how systems treat users, and how they group users. Examine what is important, engage the support of the user community.

• How easy is it to install?
• How easy is it to maintain?
• How easy is it to extend?

Many give advice to network with other educators… and get their advice, share their experiences.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Interesting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.