Podcast: Don’t forget to FOSS!
Update: I have done a followup podcast which includes all of the links below, and a few more to boot. You can check it out here.
Raise your hand if your school just has so much money that you just can’t spend it all! If your hand is up, you can just skip this show entirely. If not, consider this a brief overfiew of FOSS, Free and Open Source Software, that you might want to check out for your school. I’ve included a monster list of links below and I’ve barely even scratched the surface here. Please. Explore. Take advantage of what’s out there without spending a penny of your districts’ money.
Show notes:
FOSS Primer: A fantastic report on Free and Open Source Software in education. Definitely a must read if you haven’t seen it before. Worth a second look even if you have.
Open Office: The premier free alternative to Microsoft Office. Much more robust than many people give it credit for.
FireFox: I know most browsers are free anyway, but this one is actually Open Source. I’m a big fan of Firefox, it’s my browser of choice.
Thunderbird: A very full featured email client. Free, Open Source, and can handle RSS feeds as well.
Tux Typing: Educational typing tutor for children. Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and free for all of them.
Tux Paint: Open Source version of Kid Pix. Has many of the same tools and it can import stamp sets as well so it’s pretty flexible. They’re even working on a version that allows for shared network storage of projects! They’re really working hard to make it school friendly.
The GIMP: Don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars for Photoshop? Then bring out the GIMP! You’d have to be a real Photoshop guru to find a feature you need that GIMP doesn’t support.
Open Admin: A Student Information System that’s completely Open Source. Demographics, Attendance, Gradebook, Discipline, Report Cards, and it’s all web based. It’s come a long way in a short time.
Apache: If you’re running a web server and don’t know what Apache is, then you’re doing something wrong. Millions of web sites can’t be wrong.
Moodle: A modular Content Management System. Very well developed and runs on just about anything.
Drupal: Another Content Management System, similar to Moodle, but different.
Wordpress: There are tons of free blogging packages, so I’m just linking to the one that I use. There is also a MultiUser version.
SendMail: The standard in email servers. Simple, basic, and as reliable as they come.
QMail: Another email server that I used to use on my home server. There’s a ton of resources for getting this set up and running.
Open-XChange: This project has been around for a while. It’s the original Open Source alternative to Microsoft Exchange. To be honest, I don’t know much about this one, but they’ve got quite a bit of history behind them.
Hula: A new kid on the block. An Open Source alternative to Microsoft Exchange. I’m extremely interested in this one and may be installing it on my server. Sounds promising.
DirAdmin: A graphical interface for managing Open Directory users and groups. I’d be curious to see if it works on OSX. Based on what I’ve read, I think it should.
eGroupWare: A multi-user web-based suite that offers up email, addressbook, calendar, infolog (notes, to-do’s, phone calls), content management, forum, bookmarks, and a wiki (kitchen sink not included).
- Podcast: Free and Open Source Software redux
- Have you switched your operating system today?
- Do ya Koha?
- More from ICE: Providing an Open Source Solution for School Wide Services
- OSTube: DIY YouTube
Eric Jefcoat
3/3/2005
Steve,
Thanks for posting all these incredible free resources!! Great stuff!! I do one show per week with one resource and here you are knockin’ out about twenty in one posting. That’s about five months of work at my pace. 
Great job–love the podcasts!
Eric Jefcoat
teachnology.blogspot.com
Bud The Teacher
3/10/2005
Conference Time
lately has been talking about the list of links I created for the show notes of my “Don’t Forget to FOSS” podcast. I really should go back to that post, [...]
ww.teach42.com/2005/01/24/free-and-open-source-software/”>written about it before and podcasted about it as well. When I went to the ICE conference a few weeks ago, I [...]
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