Back in February I attended a couple of sessions about free software in education. One was the kickoff meeting of OLPC Europe (the European support group for One Laptop Per Child). The other, was a fantastic talk by Knut Yrvin, who’s done a lot of work with free software in education in Norway.
His focus in the talk was on cross-platform free software - that is, free software that can be used in schools and runs on Windows, Linux, and (usually) Mac. He gave four examples of free software that he thinks is great in schools:
GCompris (award-winning software for younger end of primary school children) (www.gcompris.net/-en-). Having since met a 5 year old at LugRadio Live USA whose favourite activity on her OLPC laptop is GCompris, I’ll happily recommend it too.
StopMotion (for older end of primary school) (I’ve just been hunting for the URL for Windows but can’t find anything about it - can only find the page for the LInux version developer.skolelinux.no/info/studentgrupper/2005-hig-stopmotion/index.php - will let you know if I find the Windows one cos it looks really cool software)
OpenOffice.org (for secondary school level) (www.openoffice.org) - He made a point of saying that we shouldn’t inflict office skills on young children cos it’s boring. 
But at secondary level, this is a great alternative to paying for Microsoft Office. I use it all the time at work and at home. It’s free now but used to be a product from Sun Microsystems who sold it as Star Office. Much better now and is compatible with MS Office documents (eg .doc, .xls, .ppt files). Just download it and have a go.
Firefox web browser (all ages) (www.mozilla-europe.org/en). Again, I use this all the time (alternative to Internet Explorer) at home and at work.
If you’re a Windows user and want to know more about free software in education, there’s more free software that will run on Windows here: www.schoolforge.net
That’s right! They’ve made it to the second episode of the Ubuntu UK podcast (a.k.a. UUPC).
I was privy to a pre-release airing last night and I was very impressed, having sat through hours of recording time on Saturday… 
The show now has its own Twitter ID (@uupc) so that you can follow its progress from recording, through editing, to release.
Enjoy!
This is me with my early birthday pressie from the lovely Tony:
Perfect for travelling to geeky conferences.
The title says it all really.
Some of the guys in the Ubuntu-UK community have released a podcast. And Episode 1 of, hopefully, many more is now available.
Okay, it’s not just ’some guys’. One of them is my other half, Tony (a.k.a. TonyTiger), I know the others, and I was actually present for part of one of the interviews on there. So my pimping the podcast here is probably slightly predictable. On the other hand, it really is rather good!
So give it a go.
You can download it from the podcast’s funky new site at podcast.ubuntu-uk.org.
Less than 24 hours ago, we arrived home from a great weekend in Brussels at FOSDEM (see the photos).
FOSDEM is an annual 2-day conference for free and open source software developers (or users, in many cases) in Brussels, Belgium. The conference programme describes the event as:
4000+ GEEKS
200+ LECTURES
2 DAYS
0 €
Yep, 0 €. That’s free and gratis! Which is rather impressive for such a big event.
My other half has been to FOSDEM a few times but this was only my second experience of Brussels geekery. Last year, I remember enjoying the weekend (we went with a lovely group of people) but apart from some specific talks (inc Jim Gettys on the OLPC, and a talk about the KDE documentation project), I wasn’t so blown away by the conference itself; my general memory is of being cold and tired.
So I wasn’t sure about going this year but in the end I did - if nothing else, it’d be a weekend in Brussels (which is a really lovely city) and good food and company. Which it was. *And* I enjoyed the conference itself!
As ever, I’m planning to write up some of the talks that I went to. As ever, I probably won’t (though I will try!). In the meantime, here’s what I saw:
As Tony says, none of the keynotes were that great; the Tux in Shades one, which I thought would be interesting, was particularly disappointing (though the guy seemed to know his stuff).
So, what was cool and uncool for me?
| Cool |
Not so cool |
| Knut Yrvin, who did the OSS in Education talk in the CrossDesktop developer room. Best presenter I saw. |
Having two presenters for the Linux in Hollywood keynote. Unnecessary, pointless, and annoying. |
| Lots of OLPC laptops around! |
Mine’s not arrived yet.  |
| The green OLPC hand-crank. |
Not being able to find the guy to get a closer look at the green hand-crank. |
| Good presentation on accessibility issues (Debian and accessibility talk) with explanation of how Braille output works. |
Developers who don’t realise thatCommand Line != GUI with your eyes closed. |
| Yummy dinner and beer in the evenings. |
Yucky burger and crappy coffee during the day. |
| Chatting to lovely Josette at the O’Reilly stand. |
Impulse buying at the O’Reilly stand - as usual! |
| Tony’s phone worked abroad! |
Vodafone website not updating my unbilled usage for 72 hours - still don’t know what it’s cost me! |
| Getting there and back in a group of about 12 people and losing only 1 of them. |
Arguing over directions - as usual. |
