FSFE Edu-Team activities
- Sebastian warns in a blog post to put the cost argument in front
- My last edu news summary was well received on the edu-eu mailinglist and let to the idea of creating an edu news planet. Anybody interested to join?
- We are working on updating the NLEDU campaign page as there are quite some news to report.
- I stumbled upon “Energize education through Open Source”, where it says on the webpage:”The first question most people have is “what is open source software?” Open source software is software that is released under the GNU General Public License.” (emphasis added) As this is obviously wrong according to any source you may refer to, I wrote to the author and ask him to correct this. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard back yet.
Community
- A school in the southeast of England, began switching its student-facing computers to GNU/Linux. Stuart Jarvis interviewed the school’s Network Manager, Malcolm Moore. I really recommend reading this interview. I posted some gems out of it earlier.
- Adam Heidebrink on Collaboration in the Classroom (cc-by)
- Heidi Ellis on another successful POSSE event
- As announced in the last edu news posting, RMLL took place in Brussles and had an own edu related track.
- Python programming contest for kids and youths ongoing (German). Participants can submit their work until September 1st. Prices are a course at the Python Academy, a RaspberryPi, an Arduino and other gadgets. There were also already two introduction courses for kids in Cologne.
- FRISK invited to a bug reporting work shop (Norse) in Oslo, Norway.
- Jon Roberts about “Open Source In The Classroom” explaining how he uses KTurtle for teaching kids how to program.
- The KDEEdu developers met at AKademy in Bilbao, Spain
- In Norway the initiative to teach kids to code is really resonating, and the Lær Kidsa Kode – initiative have really hit it here. They translate resources and organise events.
In Bergen one of the local groups are having a workshop at the beginning of August. Not sure what they did in Oslo but there was a nation wide coordinated meet-up where 6 cities and several speakers from different fields were represented. Among them Rigmor Aasrud, Minister of Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs.
They organized an event in June in Bergen where not only scratch but also Raspberry Pi, Arduino as well as other non-FLOSS projects. (Thanks to Cecilie for this input!)
Government
- The evaluation phase of moodle@schule (German) in the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, just ended. The project was initiated by the ministry of education and funded by the EU with the goal to create e-learning content for schools and personalized, to use and evaluate with Moodle. Basically, this teaches teachers how to use it. I am looking forward to reading the news about the outcome of it.
- Free Software on tablets and PCs in schools in Brussels Region. Students and teachers at 160 high schools in the Brussels Region have started to use free and open source applications. Since April, the region’s Informatics Centre (CIRB) is helping schools to modernise their computer classrooms, electronic whiteboards and networks.
Edu Software
- The website LearnDoubleEntry.org is based on DELT (Double Entry Learning Tool), which is available as free software at github, released under the terms of GNU Affero General Public License. Its aim is to offer students a way of practicing double entry bookkeeping principles without the complexity of a software that is normally used in a firm, but in a more profitable way than it would be by using spreadsheets or, worse, pen and paper.
- At Sugarlabs, there is a nice Turtle tutorial collection
distro news
- OLPC:
- Nice Article about Journal Activity
- The Engadget Show 44 has featured OLPC
- Anish Mangal writes in two parts about a pilot of the XSCE (School Server Community Edition) in Bhagmalpur, a village in India.
- Desktop4education. Once more, there was the event “linux4education” in Weiz, Austria, to teach teachers about Free Software in education.
- AbulÉdu Newsletter July issued (French)
- Open School Server 3.4 released
- First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
Other news
Video of a talk: The Kids are alright at re:publica. I haven’t watched it yet, but it was highly recommended to me, so I thought to include it here blindly.
future events
- Skolelinux will be presented at the upcomming FrOSCon in Sankt Augustin, Germany (August 24 & 25, 2013)
- “Jugend hackt” (Youth is hacking) is a two day hacking camp in Berlin for people below 18 years and will take place on September 7 & 8, 2013. Sebastian will be there, too.
If you have any infos on news or events that might be of interest to Free Software activists in education, please let me know or dump it on the edu-eu mailinglist!