Here’s a little summary again of what I found noteworthy in the field of Free Software in education in the last few months of this year in no particular order:
- After Sam Tuke informed the edu-eu mailinglist about (k)mando recently, it was quickly put into a debian paket by Georges Khaznadar from OFSET. I’m still looking for people who have actually used that software.
- I stumbled on a blog post in kde-edu planet that describes how to report a bug. I think this touches an important point. When we encourage educational institutions to use Free Software, we should not forget to teach them how to contribute and make them part of the community.
- The Open University decided to keep Moodle as it’s primary Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
- I can also recommend a blog post by Heidi Ellis about how Academica can get their students involved in Free Software projects even though the two groups don’t aim for the same goal.
- The FSF joins the Free Technology Academy.
- And of course we had our Fellowship jabber meeting on Free Software in education as announced earlier.
- I already wrote about the FreeDroidz workshop and so did Nina from tarent.
France
- There has been an UNESCO ICT-Competency Framework for teachers workshop in Paris.A little suspicious is, that Microsoft is engaged in the process. I couldn’t find anything bad in the documents so far, but I didn’t have the chance to review all the material in detail. Anybody else?
Germany
- FSuB e.V. announced that they will meet to discuss their future activities on 22 Jan, 2011 in Essen. Everybody interested in the subject is invited to come.
Norway
- FRISK in Norway hat their annual meeting. From what I could derive from an automated translation, they decided to work on a broader front and not just Skolelinux..Among other things, it was proposed to tackle all platforms with a DVD for Windows and Mac that will include Free Software as well as information about FRISK. They will also have a booth at GoOpen 2011 in March.
Spain
- The Free Technology Academy is proud to announce the incorporation of the University Rey Juan Carlos to its Associate Partner Network, through the participation of the LibreSoft research group.
That’s already it; even for such a long time span. As always, I am 100 percent certain that I missed important news about Free Software in education. Please help me making the edu-postings more complete and let me know if you get aware of something!
Update: I just stumbled on this nice posting about the LinuxDay in Dornbirn, Austria.