Podcast: Free and Open Source Software redux

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is definitely a hot topic in education. I’ve written about it before
and podcasted about it as well. When I went to the ICE conference a few weeks ago, I attended a session titled “Providing Open Source Solutions for School-wide Services.” The session consisted of a brief overview, followed by various people that had actually implemented FOSS in their schools who provided some insight into their experiences. Once again, I reccomend that you

During this podcast, I play a few clips from the session, and expand on my previous podcast about FOSS. In the show notes below, I’ve included the resources from my previous podcast and added several more as well.

Direct link to the podcast

Direct link to the entire workshop

Show notes:
The Journey: Jen, the Girl on Tech, is taking the first steps on an incredibly brave journey. You can follow along with her here.
Doug Pratt: The person who organized this workshop. He also has a consulting company.
Resources from the workshop: A list of resources that were mentioned during the workshop.
Why Open Source?: A fantastic list of articles and posts supporting the use of FOSS in schools.
K12Linux Project: A site devoted to using Linux in K-12 schools. They have resources for using Linux on your desktops and servers, as well as case studies about schools who are actually doing it. It looks like they have a custom distro of Fedora Core 3 with a bunch of educational applications installed. This is really an incredible resource.
Centre: This one is new to me. It’s a Student Information System that looks pretty well polished. I like the fact that it targets both public and private schools, as most SIS’s only target public schools. This looks very promising to me.
Seul/Edu Educational Application Index: Hundreds of FOSS programs, many organized by curricular subjects. There’s a ton of software here that I’d never even heard of.
Freeduc: Another directory of FOSS applications, also organized by curricular subjects.
Open Lab: Red Hat Linux’s basic guide to creating an essentially free computer lab. Using machines that you can probably get donated and FOSS, you can create a fully functional computer lab for virtually no cost.
Schoolforge: “Schoolforge is a foundry. It is where you will find the information, the tools and materials you need to “forge” or make a school and all its parts. All free for the asking (or download), and, in the future, international in content and character, schoolforge is not a place or an organization, but a cause, and a collection of people and projects dedicated to it: bringing quality, affordable and dependable software and teaching materials to the people who need them around the world. As such, it is not a “service” so much as it is a community focal point, which, as much as anything else, represents an opportunity to get involved in one of its aspects.”
PDF Creator: Via Jeff O’Hara, this is an Open Source pdf creator for Windows. OSX has this functionality built in, this gives Windows users the same capabilities.

From the previous show:

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).

9 Comments

Teach42 » Blog Archive » Podcast: Don’t forget to FOSS!
3/18/2005

ve 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 tha [...]

John Blake
3/20/2005

Thanks for the great current list of resources.

Help Desk Software
8/18/2005

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8/30/2005

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8/31/2005

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Tom Churm
12/2/2005

Regarding the mention of PDF Creator:

For a free, cross-platform RSS/Atom/OPML to PDF Creator, please check out my free online service:
http://rss2pdf.com

The OPML 2 PDF feature enables you to create PDF magazines from your favorite feed collections.

The RSS 2 PDF Bookmarklets enable you easily autodetect newsfeeds from your websites and create PDF archives of them with a single click:
http://rss2pdf.com/bookmark.php

New features and refinements are being added all the time.

I think this service might be especially useful to people doing web research.

Thanks,

Tom Churm
Creator,
RSS2PDF
http://rss2pdf.com

eIT
6/21/2006

Thank you very much for the blog article…I co-ordinate a web page at eIT.in for Free & Open Source Software WWW Resources and I was looking for more web resources for open source used in education…your web log is a great find…kindly allow me so I could provide a link to this blog from the page

Thanks for the efforts

Ec @ IT & Software Database @ eIT.in