Free and Open Source Software and the Classroom

Who am I?David Schult, M.A., M.Ed., Vice Principal of the High School at Escuela Internacional Sampedrana

Who are you?Teachers, educators, parents or students interested or curious about what FOSS is available.

What do you Know? What do you Want to know? What will you Learn? (KWL)

Intro video to play as people arrivelinuxad_shareopensource_ad_spooflinux_ad_yesiamlinux_ad_numberonethetruthaboutopensource_spoof

Introduction yourself, others

KWLRaise your hand if you have heard about any of the following:Gcompris, Childsplay, FOSS, Open Source, Linux, Ubuntu, OLPC, Firefox

Where Can I Find All This Info?

www.ttt2009.wikispaces.com Everything in the presentationwww.osalt.com Open Source Alternativewww.k12opensource.com/ FOSS for schools

www.schoolforge.net/ More FOSS for schoolsosliving.com Open Source Livingwww.fsf.org/ Free Software Foundation

http://sourceforge.net/ Sourceforgehttp://freshmeat.net/ Freshmeat

mashable.com/2007/09/23/open-source/ 480 Programs!www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html Why FOSS?http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html What do you gnu?

The WORLD

BUSINESS

and STUDENTS

Why Educational Technology?

have all CHANGED!

SCHOOLS,

TEACHERS,

and their CLASSROOMS

But too often . . .HAVE NOT changed!

Toward 21st Century Skills:
The Traditional Classroom

Teacher directed; teacher lecturing

Rows of desks

Students working alone on assignments

Focus of instruction on memorization of facts and concepts

All students doing the same assignment

No technology usage

Focus on getting the right answer

Textbooks rule

Paper-and-pencil tests, often multiple choice

Courtesy of Susan Frierson from The Bach Center for Evaluation & Research

Toward 21st Century Skills:
The Transitional Classroom

Teacher guidance

Focus of instruction is on understanding concepts

Students problem-solve, problems are contrived

Teacher is using technology

Textbooks still the central resource, but hands-on resources are also used

Assessments are more problem-solving based, but still summative and mostly paper-and-pencil

Courtesy of Susan Frierson from The Bach Center for Evaluation & Research

Toward 21st Century Skills:
The 21st Century Classroom

Students choose strategies to solve problems

Students collaborate on projects and assignments

Both students and teachers use technology

Focus of instruction on understanding and applying concepts

Classroom arranged in clusters to facilitate interaction

Students learn facts and concepts in the context of solving relevant, real-world problems (personal, local, national, global)

Courtesy of Susan Frierson from The Bach Center for Evaluation & Research

Focus on exploring possibilities and testing hypotheses

Focus on producing quality products

Focus on communication

Assessments are ongoing with feedback throughout

Toward 21st Century Skills:
The 21st Century Classroom

Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?

Red Hat CEO Bob Young asks the question, Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut? and after everyone answers No. He follows up with What do you know about modern internal-combustion engines? The ability to open the hood, like access to the source code, gives the consumer control. The consumer chooses to have the car serviced at the dealer, if hes not satisfied with the work or the price, he can choose to take the car somewhere else.

Even if you don't know how the engine works, you still want to be able to open it!

Red Hat CEO Bob Young asks the question, Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut? and after everyone answers No. He follows up with What do you know about modern internal-combustion engines? The ability to open the hood, like access to the source code, gives the consumer control. The consumer chooses to have the car serviced at the dealer, if hes not satisfied with the work or the price, he can choose to take the car somewhere else.

What is Open Source?

Open source software (OSS) refers to software programs that are distributed with the source codehence open source. The open source license allows users the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to study and modify the program, and to freely redistribute copies of the original or modified program.

Terminology

Open-Source Software (OSS) is software for which the source code is freely and publicly available, though the specific licensing agreements vary as to what one is allowed to do with that code. (State of Kansas)

Free Software Movement is an ethical imperative, because only free software respect the users' freedom. -- Think of free speech, not free beer.

Free Software is OSS but not all OSS is Free Software

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

How can FREE be different from FREE?

Free as in "BEER"

You get what comes in the bottle.

You drink what you get.

You can't improve it and re-sell it.

Examples:

iTunes

MSN Messenger

Photoshop (not actually free)

Internet Explorer

Free as in "SPEECH"

You can hear it, change it and pass it on.

You can say what you want.

Improve it, repackage it and market it as your own.

Examples:

Songbird

Miranda

GIMP

Mozilla Firefox

Open Source
another way of building software

The software evolves more rapidly and organically.

Users needs are rapidly met.

New versions are released very often, tested by a community of users, resulting in superior quality software tested on more platforms.

Security is enhanced because the code is exposed to the world.

Open source software is often constructed using the same time-tested methodologies and practices used to construct proprietary software. However there are a number of interesting differences that result from the difference in rights conferred by the license:

Is OSS really Free?

Open source is often thought of as free software. In fact, one of the benefits is that anyone can use, modify, and redistribute the software without a license fee.

While the code is free, the benefits have much more to do with the freedoms than the cost.

Moodle

Course Management System (CMS)

designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities

Use it on any computer you have handy including webhosts

It can scale from a single-teacher site to a 40,000-student University

Ohio State, Texas Tech, Mississippi State

http://moodle.org/

Joomla (Content Management System)

Portal or content system for hosting websites.

Plug-in for blogs, wikis, forms, calendars, email

http://www.joomla.org

Personal blog software hosted or downloaded to host on your server.

Supports multiple languages:

Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, German

French, Italian, and more. . .

http://wordpress.com

Mozilla

Firefox (Web Browser)

has an intuitive interface blocks viruses, spyware, and popup ads.

Tabbed Browsing

Thunderbird (Email Clint)

Simple to use, powerful, and customizable, full-featured email application.

Junk Mail Filters

Anti-Phishing Protection

Advanced Security

http://www.mozilla.org/

Full-Featured Email Simple to use, powerful, and customizable, Thunderbird is a full-featured email application. Thunderbird supports IMAP and POP mail protocols, as well as HTML mail formatting. Easily import your existing email accounts and messages. Built-in RSS capabilities, powerful quick search, spell check as you type, global inbox, deleting attachments and advanced message filtering round out Thunderbird's modern feature set. Junk Mail Filters Each email you receive passes through Thunderbird's leading-edge junk mail filters. Each time you mark messages as spam, Thunderbird improves its filtering so you can spend more time reading the mail that matters. Thunderbird will also use your mail provider's spam filters to keep junk mail out of your inbox. Anti-Phishing Protection Thunderbird protects you from increasingly common email scamsalso known as phishingwhich try to fool you into handing over your passwords and other personal information. Thunderbird will tell you when it thinks a message might be a scam. Advanced Security Thunderbird provides enterprise and government grade security features including S/MIME, digital signing, message encryption, support for certificates and security devices. Attachments are never run without your express permission, protecting you from many worms and viruses. Automatic Updates The new Software Update feature makes it easy to get the latest security and feature updates to Thunderbird. Thunderbird automatically downloads these small updates in the background and prompts you when they are ready to be installed. Customize Thunderbird Select new button controls for your toolbars, install extensions to add new features, or change the look of your browser with themesthe way Thunderbird looks and works is under your control.

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.

http://www.openoffice.org

http://www.learnopenoffice.org/

GIMP

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program

Freely distributed piece of software

Used for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It works on many operating systems, in many languages.

http://www.gimp.org/

Nvu (N-view)

WYSIWYG Web page editor.

Integrated file management via FTP.

Reliable HTML code creation that will work with all of today's most popular browsers.

Jump between WYSIWYG Editing Mode and HTML using tabs.

Tabbed editing to make working on multiple pages a snap.

Powerful support for forms, tables, and templates.

http://www.nvu.com

Nvu

WINK (Tutorial & Presentation)

Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation product aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software.

Capture screenshots, add buttons, explanation boxes, titles, etc.

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

Audacity

A free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder.

Record live audio.

Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.

Edit Ogg, MP3, and WAV sound files.

Cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds. Change speed or pitch of a recording.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Audacity

IHMC Cmap (concept mappings)

construct, navigate, share and criticize knowledge models represented as concept maps.

http://cmap.ihmc.us

PDF Creator

PDFCreator easily creates PDFs from any Windows program.

Use it like a printer in Word, StarCalc or any other Windows application.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator

Hidden Dangers

Generally no one to hold financially responsible should problems arise.

Changing an official version will void warranty.

If customizing OSS, the total cost could be as much as off the shelf software.

Required applications do not work/run on an open-source operating system.

Specialty programs are no longer being actively developed.

http://www.trainingmag.com/msg/content_display/publications/e3i5adce9be1b1efb206c4d540a4194c9d3

Example of official versionNovell SUSERed Hat Enterprise

K3b (DVD burning software) was last released on Feb 11 2007php help desk was last released in 2003

RESOURCES

Repository of Free Technology Lesson Plans

Teacher Technology Training

Course Management Software: Moodle and Blackboard

Free Computer Software: Ubuntu, Edubuntu, 450+ Free Software Solutions

Tips for Online Safety

Smart Technologies SmartBoard

Web-Based Student Information System

Additional Resources

OSS on CD's

http://softwarefor.org

http://www.theopendisc.com/

Implementation Guide

http://www.netc.org/openoptions/images/pdf/right.pdf

Locations to find OSS

http://sourceforge.net/

http://www.osalt.com/

http://www.opensourcewindows.org/

Additional Resources
Continued

K12 Open Source

http://www.k12os.org/

http://www.k12linux.org/

http://www.k12opentech.org/

http://www.k12opensource.com/

The North Central Linux Symposium

http://www.nclinux.net/

Open Source Friday

http://www.classroom20wiki.com/live+conversations