Open Source Schools

Vital, a joint Open University / e-Skills project addressing teachers' CPD needs funded by the DCSF are inviting contributions of CPD resources for a new Open Course Movement initiative.

Built on open source platforms Moodle and Drupal, the Vital site provides a range of online CPD materials related to the use of technology in schools as well as acting as a hub for other training providers. Project director Peter Twining describes the Open Course Movement as being "to course materials what the Open Source Movement is to software." He says,

The OCM aims to enable ICT CPD providers (and others) to collaborate on the development of course materials which will be available on a Creative Commons licence. The benefits of this will be:

• reduced development costs for individual ICT CPD providers
• enhanced quality of course provision through the pooling of expertise and staff time in developing the materials
• greater consistency of ICT CPD provision across the country
• greater pool of high quality ICT CPD resources available for everyone to use (on a Creative Commons licence)

This sounds like a great opportunity for teachers and others in the open source community to work together to develop Moodle courses to share their insights and experiences of technology in education, either focussing on the use of particular applications to support or extend learning, or addressing broader issues.

The Cabinet Office has launched the new Government ICT Strategy today, applying across the whole of the public sector. Open source, open standards and re-use is one of the fourteen strands for delivering the strategy, which promises £3.2 billion savings annually from 2013/14.

Last year's Action Plan on open source, open standards and re-use has been revised, with a new version released today, which:

• brings this in line with developments in cloud computing, most notably the G-Cloud (G for government, not Google, this time),
• stops open source from being rejected because proprietary software has been purchased up front, and
• adds a line to say that "If [suppliers] are unable to provide evidence of fair consideration of open source solutions, their bid will be deemed non-compliant with government policy and the proposal is likely to be automatically be delisted from the procurement."
  

The latter point would have significant implications for BSF and other managed service procurements.

The Government Application Store, sort of like an iphone App Sore but for really, really big apps, is another of the strands. This will offer 'an online portal for the sharing and reuse of online business applications, services and components across the public sector'. If applied to education as well as the rest of the public sector, this could bring big savings and provide a firm basis for interoperability. Given its popularlity in schools, colleges and local authorities, Moodle must surely be a strong contender for the G-AS, as perhaps are other important web-based apps popular with teachers and pupils, such as Drupal, Wordpress and Elgg.

Community members and visitors who are using Moodle in their schools or authoties might be interested in presenting a paper at April's UK Moodle Moot in London. The Moots are friendly gatherings with a stong culture of learning from and sharing with fellow delegates from all sectors of the UK Moodle community, and it would be great to have a strong representation from schools at this year's moot.

Elena Blanco of OSS Watch writes:

The first OSS Watch newsletter of 2010 has been published and is available on our website at http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/newsletters/january2010.pdf

We wanted to start the New Year with a bit of a bang and so we are pleased to announce the publication of one of our most difficult-to-produce articles 'Microsoft: an end to open hostilities?'  I say difficult-to-produce because we take our non-advocacy role very seriously and so balancing this article with all of the history and strong feelings on all sides was both delicate and time consuming. We are pleased with the result; we hope you will be too.

The Open Source Café (L20) is partnership between the Becta supported Open Source Schools community and Open Forum Europe, a not-for-profit organization that has long advocated open standards and open source for business and the public sector throughout Europe. The Café is also supported by University of London Computer Centre, Red Hat, The Learning Machine (Ingots) and www.linuxit.com/.

Leon Cych of Learn 4 Life is streaming many of the sessions on the Café stand, and we hope to make an archive of these available in due course. Details of the current streams are available by following Leon's twitter feed. Voxpops from presenters are on our You Tube channel.

Other open source interest at BETT includes:

• Sirius Corporation (Becta and OGC approved software suppliers, stand Q50)
• North West Learning Grid (RBC, and leaders of NDRB and OSCA, stand G50)
• Synergy Learning (Moodle Partners, stand N2)
• Edugeek (online technician and network manager community, stand G89)
• Visual Software will be showcasing a Moodle SIF agent, making integration of Moodle with other systems much easier (stand B20)
• The Elgg powered Learning Landscape 4 Schools will be on E2BN's stand, J56.
• Mimio (C76) have a Ubuntu computer running the drvier for their device which transforms any board into an IWB.
• Web filtering and firewall solution SmoothWall (G85) is built on open source components, and has an open source version available from smoothwall.org
• Futurelab (J11) have an example of work they've been doing on student-authored constuction: "using open source electronics [arduino] to construct intelligent objects so children gain a deeper insight into the workings of digital technology"

If past form and the wiki are anything to go by, there'll also be a number of open source presentations at TeachMeet Bett 2010.

Some thought provoking observations from NWLG's CEO Gary Clawson in a piece on Merlin John's site, Gary predicts impending budget cuts for schools ICT, but sees this as possibly being "one of the most postive things that has ever happened to ICT development in our schools".

Gary highlights some examples of high cost, low impact interventions, but goes on to discuss how much more the education community could have achieved using the freedom to innovate which open source would bring, both for those in schools and for commercial organisations who could have added value to common core functionality without having to reinvent their own proprietary wheels.

Back at the Open Source Schools Local Authority Seminar in October, Gary launched the Open Source Councils Alliance (OSCA), which now has 50 members, far beyond the original core 17 from NWLG, with a principle objective of producing cost benefit analyses and implementation plans that would generate savings from current ICT expenditure - OSCA's target of at least 10% isn't nearly ambitious enough, if Becta's own TCO study is anything to go by.

Paul Haigh, assistant headteacher (specialisms and innovation), describes how open source has provided a 'virtual school' for all the stakeholders at Notre Dame High School in Sheffield. Notre Dame is one of a number of schools using open source to have gained the prestigious Becta ICT Mark, and this year it went on to win Becta's Excellence Award for Best Whole School in Yorkshire and Humberside.

Here's what Becta have to say about the school:

Notre Dame is a Catholic secondary school with a diverse intake, with triple specialisms in technology, humanities and leading edge. It fosters an outstanding culture of innovation in its use of ICT across the whole school community. This is at the heart of its vision, and is driving the school forward both in the cycle of continuous improvement, and in the excellent progress made by students in developing and applying their ICT skills. Notre Dame also has a good reputation for collaboration and sharing ICT practice through its various activities with national organisations.
Notre Dame's virtual school is an excellent example of its innovative use of ICT to support personalised learning. This flexible and bespoke resource has improved communication between students, staff, parents and governors and incorporates Web 2.0 technologies such as blogging, secure voting and live feeds. The content includes revision resources, teaching tips and e-safety advice. A dedicated innovation team supports these developments, and crucially empowers all teachers to share and develop their ICT skills through formalised curriculum innovation responsibilities.
A further strength at Notre Dame is its effective and efficient use of electronic data. The school follows the data management mantra of 'enter once, use many times' and has sophisticated electronic assessment systems, including a management information system that supports data collection, collation and storage. Parents have full access to their children's data in a Real Time reporting system that exceeds the expectations on the Online Reporting targets for schools.

Next year's Moodle Moot is to be hosted by University of London Computer Centre on 13th and 14th April. Here are the details...

“We are very excited at the opportunity to host MoodleMoot UK 2010” says Mick Kahn, Head of Application Services at ULCC. “Moodle is now the VLE of choice for the UK education sector and a triumph for the Open Source approach and this conference will bring together teachers, developers and administrators to learn from each other and advance the UK e-learning agenda."

We will be hard at work, putting together two days packed with thought provoking keynotes and engaging workshops whilst offering you the chance to meet fellow Moodlers.

Sean Keogh from pteppic.net, a member of the Programme Group for MoodleMoot UK 2010, who organised MoodleMoot UK since it started in 2004, says "I'm very pleased to be handing over the reins of MoodleMoot UK to ULCC. With their engagement of all sectors of the Moodle community, I am sure that they will organise an excellent conference and I look forward to working with them". The conference will be held on 13 & 14 April 2010, at Senate House, the University of London’s iconic Art Deco building, which has recently undergone major refurbishment.