Another month passed without me noticing it. There is currently so much going on, that I did not find as much time collecting edu news as usual. If you come accross anything that might be worth mentioning in this series, please drop me a note or, even better, drop it on the edu-eu mailinglist!
FSFE Edu-Team activities
- Sebastian writes about what OER can learn from Free Software (German)
Community
- Interview with Selena Deckelmann, who talked about What open source communities can do for teachers
“Most kids have no idea what we in the open source community do, the names of our jobs or how to get into these careers. That’s a shame, and I hope to expand both teacher and student awareness of what is possible.”
- In his blog post “How open source took root in one Pennsylvania school district”, Charlie Reisinger explains how he overcame the common prejudice towards Free Software “fueled by a desire to avoid vendor lock-in”. He concludes:
Free Software “represents more than zero cost; the principles of open source promote technological freedom of choice and encourage a participatory, collaborative spirit. These values are vital to education and student learning.
- A Microsoft fraud case in Switzerland was used by the Swiss Open Systems User Group to reiterate that Windows is superfluous in education and asks schools to switch to Free Software.
Edu Software
- Charlie Reisinger writes about the power of programmers and how one can teach more kids to become that powerful with Scratch and The Finch.
- New Intel Edu tablets with Android released (corresponding article in German) Although this seems more hardware related than Software, it still shows which software is being used on devices that are specificaly meant for education.
distro news
OLPC
- Walter Bender gives an overview on the activities in Sugar.
- Nepal: Getting Ready for XO-4 Touch
- Unleash Kids Hangout On Air with OLPC France: Friday, August 2
KDE Edu
- KDE edu folks are planning the next sprint
- Also, the KDE Edu folks are trying to find out more about ezgo and who is pushing this in Taiwan. Looking forward to any news about this.
Future Events
- SchulinformatikHerbst (Sep 26-28, 2013) Kiel, Germany
- Come Tuxgether -installation party in a school in Dreieich, Germany (Sep 27, 2013)
- Same location, next day (Sep 28, 2013): “BarCamp – Freiheit und Sicherheit im Netz“
- The OpenTechSchool Blog announced its first Hackership Programme in Berlin
- /ch/open educational conference in March 2014 (German)
As always, 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!