Jan-06 - Mar-06
From Schoolforge-UK
| 30 Mar 2006 | Interview with Eben Moglen on GPL v3 - in the Guardian today. |
| 30 Mar 2006 | Introducing ajaxSketch - Fast on the heels of last week's annoncement of ajaxWrite |
| 28 Mar 2006 | Book Review: Beginning Ubuntu Linux - From Novice to Professional by Keir Thomas - Review from slashdot. Get it at Amazon. |
| 28 Mar 2006 | Certified Open: Combatting technology lock-in in local government - New vendor self-assessment kite mark for level of compliance with openness standards. Can we expect something similar for educational suppliers soon? |
| 24 Mar 2006 | Linux Screen Reader - IBM alphaWorks announce an Assistive Technology screen reader for the Linux GNOME desktop. Free for non-commercial use. |
| 23 Mar 2006 | Public sector joined-up thinking in using FOSS single sign-on system for education and NHS - JISC's Federated Access Management system is based on Shibboleth and is the focus of attention. Buckinghamshire County Council have been using Shibboleth as part of their GfL level Moodle VLE provision. |
| 23 Mar 2006 | Sun Grid goes live - Computing for $1/hour, e.g. text to podcast. |
| 23 Mar 2006 | Ndiyo systems in South Africa - John Naughton is a founding partner of the Ndiyo project. |
| 22 Mar 2006 | Microsoft joins INCITS OpenDocument Format committee - Groklaw speculates on the company's motives. |
| 22 Mar 2006 | Better Living Through Open Source? - Developing countries' use of e-governance, being co-ordinated through UNeGov.net. |
| 21 Mar 2006 | FOSS community, disabled users must learn to communicate - and that includes SEN. The OATS project presented at this year's FLOSSIE attempts to address the issue. |
| 21 Mar 2006 | FUD is alive and well - Open source Media Watch picked up on this reaction to a "“FUD-ridden" and "uninformed" article on Open Source in the Economist. |
| 21 Mar 2006 | 6 emerging technology trends for education - 3rd Horizon report from NMC discusses: Social Computing, Personal Broadcasting, Mobile Phones, Educational Gaming, Augmented Reality and Context-Aware Environments and Devices. |
| 20 Mar 2006 | A computer for Africa - "The Solo computer is a plan to create a computer that can withstand the heat, dust and irregular power challenges many African countries suffer from" and will run Debian GNU/Linux. |
| 20 Mar 2006 | Book review: Using Moodle by Jason Cole - from OSS Watch. |
| 16 Mar 2006 | Podcast Interview with Russell Dyas of EduGeek.net - EduGeek.net is the independent community of educational IT support staff. Includes details of the April 19th conference. |
| 15 Mar 2006 | Moodle at Bett - video from the Bett site, featuring interviews with Miles Berry, Josie Fraser, Ian Usher. |
| 14 Mar 2006 | Ekiga 2.0 Voice over IP phone gives truly free PC to PC calls - Voice and video over IP phone (VoIP) similar to Skype but Open Source and based on Open Standards (supports both H.323 and SIP). Plus a service for free SIP-Address (equivalent of email address for VoIP). Formerly GnomeMeeting. |
| 11 Mar 2006 | Sun to Open-Source Education - according to Sun's McNealy in a recent speech about their GELC (Global Education and Learning Community) effort. |
| 10 Mar 2006 | OU to make learning materials free - a £5.65 million (US $9.9 million) project to make a selection of its learning materials available free of charge to educators and learners around the world, using a Creative Commons license. |
| 10 Mar 2006 | In TES Online this week Leon Cych posts about using VLEs on the TES ICT blog. He also describes how lack of consultation on VLE usage will block effective school use. Leon's excellent site Learn 4 Life has much of interest on collaborative learning including a podcast interview with Miles Berry on using the Moodle VLE. Miles also appears on p12 of this week's TES Online and as a schoolforge member has contributed to our paper on Effective eLearning through Collaboration which describes many of the possibilites now afforded by technology. |
| 8 Mar 2006 | Becta fails the open source test - and a full report on Open source in education. Why is an advert placed over that heading? |
| 7 Mar 2006 | A space on the web that we control - Steve O'Hear in the Guardian on Elgg collaborative portfolio environment. More from Elgg lead developers, Miles Berry, Terry Wassall and Steve O'Hear. |
| 3 Mar 2006 | Open source key to Victorian schools - i.e. the state of Victoria, Australia. |
| 1 Mar 2006 | Open Source Acadamy website launched - "to encourage the use of Open Source Software by local authorities through knowledge sharing and practical advice". Funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. |
| 1 Mar 2006 | Introduction to Open Source - a clear talk given by Mike Banahan of The Cutter Project and OpenForum Europe at the NAACE Strategic conference. |
| 28 Feb 2006 | NASA's World Wind: an open source, interactive 3D world viewer - Windows-only, but with an open source licence. Other planets coming soon... |
| 26 Feb 2006 | Linux distros for older hardware - linux.com test a recent Microsoft challenge to running linux on older machines by actually trying several distros. |
| 26 Feb 2006 | Electronic ink may rewrite book publishing industry - The implications for education are staggering. |
| 24 Feb 2006 | Public sector catches wikimania - featuring the OSS Watch wiki and Office of the Deputy Prime Minister e-Innovations project. |
| 24 Feb 2006 | JISC sends guidance on open source software to all colleges and universities - the paper written by the OSS Watch team for JISC in January. |
| 24 Feb 2006 | ODF Allies Launch an Offensive in Europe - Andy Updegrove says: "Till now, it's been a one-front war in Massachusetts. Now, it seems, the allies have landed on the Normandy beaches once again" |
| 23 Feb 2006 | You can't just give Free software away, can you? - an issue that is confusing some who are used to proprietary licensing but the Guardian reports on those who are misusing the freedoms for profit - "When charging for free software, the product being traded is not the software itself, and often not even the service, but user ignorance.". |
| 20 Feb 2006 | UN recommends open source - "particularly in areas related to health, education and international commerce". |
| 20 Feb 2006 | Karoshi 5.0 released - The network admin system has new features suitable for more schools and is now fully Open Source. |
| 19 Feb 2006 | Will major vendors dilute open source? - "One of the main reasons that CitiStreet likes to deal with [FOSS] vendors such as JBoss is that our senior technical staff can deal with their technical staff, instead of having to deal with useless layers in between" Barry Strasnick, CIO at CitiStreet and "If you've had doubts that open source is mainstream today, the amount of money being thrown around here should make you believe this is not just a flash in the pan," says Michael Goulde, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. "It should be something you're considering, if you're not already." |
| 17 Feb 2006 | Korea Plans to Build Linux City, University - Korea is already building an education network with GNU/Linux servers. |
| 16 Feb 2006 | Wikipedia and open source - Nicholas Carr's thoughtful critique of Wikipedia. And a response by Ross Mayfield ceo of Socialtext. |
| 16 Feb 2006 | Linux substitutes for "most wanted" Windows-only software - latest results from Novell's "most wanted" Windows/MacOS-only applications survey. Cast your vote today. |
| 16 Feb 2006 | Trucking open source across Australia |
| 14 Feb 2006 | BBC links to huge climate project - Using distributed cross-platform software from ClimatePrediction.net. |
| 13 Feb 2006 | Latest Linux TCO research results from Enterprise Management Associates - Refutes previous claims that Linux leads to higher Total Cost of Ownership in the enterprise: "With far lower acquisition costs, Linux is now a cost-effective alternative to Windows" |
| 13 Feb 2006 | JISC's policy on Open Source - OSS Watch's Randy Metcalfe argues in JISC Inform that good policy helps to codify best practice. |
| 13 Feb 2006 | Bill Thompson on Network Neutrality - How might a multi-tiered network affect education? |
| 12 Feb 2006 | Fon: WiFi everywhere - A global vision for shared WiFi access. |
| 12 Feb 2006 | Ndiyo! Community Information Centre opens in Bangladesh - Internet connection via mobile phone. |
| 8 Feb 2006 | Songbird preview released - a Firefox based media browser/player (cf. iTunes). |
| 7 Feb 2006 | Xplora Knoppix DVD - Free self-booting science materials from Xplora |
| 7 Feb 2006 | LEGO Technic Difference Engine - Andrew Carol explains the principles and how to build one. |
| 7 Feb 2006 | Computing’s energy problem - John Naughton notes another factor in the thin client equation. |
| 1 Feb 2006 | Red Hat commits to MIT's $100 laptop and Bill Gates proposes cellphone alternative |
| 25 Jan 2006 | Debian scrutinizes GPL3 - the community-based Linux distribution that is also the basis of Ubuntu and others discuss the new version of the common Open Source License. |
| 25 Jan 2006 | New Samba targets Active Directory - Includes built-in LDAP server. |
| 24 Jan 2006 | Is Google a good thing? - Thoughtful and informative article by John Lanchester in the London Review of Books |
| 19 Jan 2006 | EU Survey confirms FLOSS savings - Summary of this FLOSSPOLS survey of 955 local governments. |
| 19 Jan 2006 | Podcast by Paul Nelson - Invaluable for educators new to Linux & thin clients. |
| 17 Jan 2006 | Lawrence Lessig on the value of Anime Music Videos - Quote: "My kid couldn’t get into college till we sent them his AMVs. Now he’s a freshman at a university he never dreamed he could attend". |
| 16 Jan 2006 | Fears raised over digital rights - Anti-piracy efforts erode established rights to digital media. |
| 16 Jan 2006 | GPLv3 Draft released - Rationale is here. Summary on Simon Phipps' weblog. Groklaw has a useful comparison chart against GPLv2. |
| 9 Jan 2006 | Becta reviews UK schools for Microsoft 'lock-in', and Computing's story. |
| 9 Jan 2006 | Another list, this time, The Independent's Open source websites - must be the time of year, or the C4 effect. |
| 8 Jan 2006 | The top 10 technology trends affecting education in 2005 - This is USA. For UK it means "in 2006". |
| 11-14 Jan 2006 | Finding FOSS at BETT: * Moodle did Get to BETT - great work folks. * Open Forum Europe are sharing a stand with the The Cutter Project and you may spot a few SF-UK members there, lurking around with fliers to handout. * LAMS International - Learning Activity Management System. * The Becta Internet Cafe uses the Firefox web browser. * Not quite FOSS but Avanquest Ltd. are showing Star Office, the commercial sibling of OpenOffice.org. If you know of more FOSS at BETT please let us know on the mailing list. |
| 7 Jan 2006 | Cumbria and Lancashire Learning Platform Roadshows feature Moodle evaluation - CLEO have been running a Hosted Moodle trial in many schools (note: scroll down the newsletter looking for the moodle orange). |
| 4 Jan 2006 | City-wide wi-fi rolls out in UK |
| 3 Jan 2006 | Podcast on electronically sharing school data - from the Technosavvy blog, fairly technical but an important subject clearly presented. |
| 3 Jan 2006 | UK School learns a Linux lesson - Another case study - well done Paul! |
