K12 Open Technologies

This week I had the pleasure of presenting at the CUE/FETC Innovative Learning Conference in San Jose, CA. Once again, I presented on the topic of Open Technologies, in the form of a case study on our use here at SUSD. Since this is essentially a classroom-oriented conference, I decided to focus primarily on desktop and web applications, including our use of open source on PCs, Macs, and Linux machines, Green Computing Initiative, and web technologies. 

Enjoy this audio podcast from the session. Be sure to get the resources from my prior post.

[ Download - audio/mp3 ] 

Cross-posted from Absence of Limitations blog

NECC is the largest educational
technology conference in North America, and it attracts 12,000+
participants. For the fourth year Steve Hargadon will be running an "Open Source
Pavilion" there with 40+ computers running Linux, and with a speaker
series that's now a part of the main program.

Here is the schedule of Open Source sessions
at NECC...

One of this week's School Improvement RFP's of the Week from Edbizbuzz's Dean Millot should be of special interest to open source advocates:

The Alabama Department of Education (SDE) is seeking responses to
this RFP for the hosting and management of the Moodle open source
learning management system.

Consider the classroom of tomorrow. That place where students come not just to gain, but to consolidate their gains. That room with no barriers, no boundaries, no limits. That place of infinite height and depth, unlimited reach and unhindered access. A space with many addresses, many cultures, many views. A place where success is honored, and failure is embraced. Where creativity is rewarded, where collaborations are built, where teams are celebrated.

There are no time limits there, no restrictions, or walls. Ideas are welcome, voices are heard, friends are cherished, connections are nourished. This is the classroom of tomorrow, the "open" classroom, and it's time to start building it today.

Using a new product requires some re-learning. That’s unavoidable. But you rarely have to learn an entirely new set of skills—it’s just that the new stuff sticks out as us. This article is to emphasize the similarities between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office; the things you don’t have to re-learn. I hope that not only will this show some of the similarities but will show you some shortcuts you might not have known about in either program.

Today I was referred to this excellent article by a high school senior from Plano Independent School District in Texas, entitled Open Minds with Open Source (page 46, should your browser not automatically take you there.) It was written by Alex Hirsch, son of Plano ISD's Jim Hirsch, who is a long time open-technologies advocate and former board chair of CoSN. I was particularly taken with his perspectives on open content and invasive copyright enforcement in our digital age...

Last Friday I had the pleasure of hosting a round table on the topic of open source software in education at Technology and Learning's Tech Forum West in Long Beach, CA. Our lively discussion included K-20 classroom teachers and IT people from both education and industry. Topics truly ran the gamut of open source, including desktop applications, security, deployment, perception, web applications like Moodle, and ultra-mobile devices like the Asus EeePC.

It's a little noisy, but I hope you enjoy the recorded discussion and, more importantly, will share your thoughts on the topic!

[ Download - audio/mp3 ]

Cross-posted from Absence of Limitations blog

One of the most helpful non-technical configurations that IT administrators can do is to take all free clip art they can get ahold of, assemble it and categorize it, and give it to every user to make OpenOffice.org more fun and more usable. This is especially beneficial in schools.

Below is a list of a few of my favorite open source applications for the
desktop. Most are available for any platform, and many are available on
the OpenDisc for Windows systems (which you can download here.) It's important to keep in
mind that these applications:

• Are free
• Can be given to students to install and use at home
• Offer educators the opportunity to introduce new technologies in their educational environement
• Provide essential skills that are transferrable to applications of similar types in the commercial world

One of the benefits of open source software is that anyone can
download the source code, throw together a feature or two, and make
it available to anyone who wants it. This sounds great, and is great,
but until recently I'm not sure how much it happened on an individual
level. I know I don't remember writing up any cool new features.

The Extensions capability changes this, though. Visit
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/
and you're in a Disneyland of cool features, ranging from nice little
add-ons to immensely helpful. If you're evaluating OpenOffice.org, or
have been running it for years, you don't have the whole picture
without investigating the extensions.

I've described a few of my favorites in this blog entry, but
you're going to want to at least read the names of all of them.