The Open Source Schools Community is an initiative to help schools with awareness, adoption, use and development of Open Source Software (OSS). A number of schools are already realising the benefits of OSS within their ICT strategy. This project will work to share their experiences along with good OSS practice from other sectors with the wider community of educational practitioners, including teachers, decision makers and IT specialists.
Open Source Schools is a two year project supported by Becta. The goal is that during the span of the project there will be sufficient numbers of active members for the community to ultimately become self sustaining.
We seek to provide an informative and impartial website that will raise awareness of how OSS can be used to enhance learning, teaching and school infrastructures. The project is developing and supporting a community of practice that engages those who are currently using OSS and welcomes and supports new members who wish to explore the potential of OSS.
Our aim is to create an educationally focused website driven by the needs of the community – responding to questions, providing tailored advice and guidance, broadening choice, stimulating contributions and discussion within the community and providing the means to make informed decisions and become confident users of OSS where it meets users' needs. In the early stages, the project is developing resources with the support of existing champions of OSS, encouraging them to share their experiences with those members at the start of the OSS learning journey.
We work to complement existing OSS community initiatives within schools and elsewhere. We provide a directory of OSS products and OSS service providers, along with community case studies of successful practice, focusing on the achievable benefits to learning, teaching and schools.
While the provision of information is important, the heart of this project is the development of a web based community of practice whose membership comprisea people with an interest in exploring open source software solutions to enhance learning and teaching within schools and between schools and their communities.
The project is managed by AlphaPlus Consultancy Ltd
The current project team is:
- Anne Matthews, project manager
- Miles Berry, community manager
