Open Source Schools and Open Forum Europe, supporters of open source and open standards, have joined forces to create something rather special for this year's BETT.
We hope that teachers, techies and leaders who are successfully using open source software in education will join us to share their experience and expertise in an informal, friendly environment at the Open Source Café on Stand L20 in the Supporting Next Generation Zone (formerly the Policy in Practice Zone). In open source barcamp style, there will be at least 24 slots throughout the four days for community members and supporters to host 30 minute sessions in a manner of their choosing; this could be a presentation, workshop or round table discussion. We plan to film sessions for later upload to YouTube etc. There's a press release at opensourceschools.org.uk/files/OpenSourceCafe.pdf
To sign up to run individual sessions soon simply log in and edit the wiki.
Open Source Café Menu
Community members are invited to sign up to host sessions below. These can be informal presentations, practical workshops (although not everyone brings a laptop to BETT), or round table discussions. We hope to record these for later distribution via the Web. There'll be a Linux laptop and large LCD screen, as well as a coffee table and some bean bags.
To offer a session, log in and edit the wiki.
Voxpops and Twit cam streams are available online.
Wednesday 13th January
| Time | Presenter / Facilitator | Title | Format (presentation / workshop / discussion) |
Notes |
| 11:00-11:30 | Peter Kemp / David Willmot | OpenEducationDisc - Making IT accessible for all | Presentation - Discussion | Looking at the cross curricular provision of Open Source software for students at home and at school |
| 11:30-12:00 | Jo Claessens & Andy Wilson BBC |
BBC Learning - Open Lab | Hands on mobile workshop | Release London's hidden monsters, use felt tip pens, brains and texts to set them free! |
| 12:00-12:30 | Anders Bjekholt Moava | Moava for education | Presentation | Moava is a new open source website and learning platform developed especially for schools and pre-schools. Easy to use and with a focus on the student as a producer. |
| 2:00-2:30 | Brian Lockwood Egglescliffe School |
BSF - Open Source | Presentation - Discussion | The service provider should have a positive role in supporting practitioners. What are the roles of the practitioner and the service provider? What incentives can we put in place for the service provider to engage with Open Source practice. |
| 2:30-3:00 | Ian Usher Buckinghamshire County Council |
Moodling across Buckinghamshire | Presentation | How we took some of the principles of collaboration and sharing associated with OS and used them to support schools & encourage schools to support one another. |
| 3:00-3:30 | Tony Whitmore, Fareham College | Open Source Virtualisation | Presentation/ Discussion | The practical experience of implementing virtualisation using an Open Source platform in an educational institution. |
| 3:30-4:00 | Tony Parkin & Bill How (SSAT) | Moodling across the world | Presentation/Discussion | Using moodle-based solutions and work with international partners to develop flexible, autonomous & affordable learning and CPD platforms for use in UK and overseas (iCPD & Intel - progress to date) |
| 4:45-5:15 | Ian Utting University of Kent |
Greenfoot | Demonstration |
Thursday 14th January
| Time | Presenter / Facilitator | Title | Format (presentation / workshop / discussion) |
Notes |
| 11:00-11:30 | Alison Wilson CLEO |
Moodle and CLEO | Presentation/informal discussion | Drop in and chat about how we have successfully implemented Moodle to over 700 schools |
| 11:30-12:00 | Dr Malcolm Herbert Red Hat |
Lowering costs for Education with Open Source Software | Presentation | |
| 12:00-12:30 | Paul Haigh Notre Dame High School |
The Virtual School | Presentation | See the case study for details. |
| 2:00-2:30 | Steve Lee OSS Watch |
Evaluating Open Source Software for Sustainability | Presentation | |
| 2:30-3:00 | Mick Kahn ULCC |
Open source, shared services and our customers | Presentation | |
| 3:00-3:30 | Brian Lockwood Egglescliffe School |
Some cool things | Presentation | eeePCs, replacing exchange server, AD for Linux workstations |
| 3:30-4:00 | Tim Bateson Houghton Kepier Sports College |
while (cost <=0) { increase fun; greater innovation; increase freedom; } |
Presentation | How our school has used open source software to increase ICT development across the whole school, whilst reducing costs. Will give an overview of how we have merged our MIS and moodle system to create a parent and leaner portal. |
| 4:00-4:30 | Roger Lang CLEO and Sumit Sarkar |
Blender 3D Graphics: Open Source and the Open Curriculum | Presentation |
Friday 15th January
| Time | Presenter / Facilitator | Title | Format (presentation / workshop / discussion) |
Notes |
| 11:00-11:30 | Zoe Ross | Making games - Scratch and Alice | Presentation | |
| 11:30-12:00 | Ian Lynch The Learning Machine |
Innovation transfer and open source puzzles | Presentation | So how do we sustain Open Source development for schools? Can children be producers? |
| 12:00-12:30 | Roger Lang CLEO |
Video Editing with Blender | Presentation | |
| 2:00-2:30 | Ashley Garner Redbridge College |
Collaborating on Moodle's e-ILP plugin | Presentation | |
| 2:30-3:00 | Robert Castelo Code Positive |
Drupal for Education | Presentation | Introduction and case studies for the software that powers sites for Yale, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, and the Open University. |
| 3:00-3:30 | Dai Barnes St Benedict's Ealing |
Moodling across the school | Presentation | School council. Photo comp database. Committee forums |
| 3:30-4:00 | James Wright | Enhancing Open Source use in schools | Presentation / Discussion | The adoption of FOSS in schools is often stifled by the argument that our students will need to know specific proprietary applications in order to be employable e.g. do we teach using Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org, Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape? This session will address some of the issues surrounding that argument and aim to provide some strategic leadership for educators to enhance FOSS use amongst colleagues, students, parents and the wider community. |
| 4:00-4:30 | John Hackett | Learning Landscape for Schools | Presentation | Introduction to the LL4Schools social learning platform. Based on Elgg it is a true social network created for schools to provide a safe environment for learning and collaboration with a global audience. |
Saturday 16th January
| Time | Presenter / Facilitator | Title | Format (presentation / workshop / discussion) |
Notes |
| 11:00-11:30 | Tony Sheppard Northamptonshire County Council |
Open Information and Collaboration | Provocation | |
| 11:30-12:00 | Miles Berry Roehampton University |
Open Source and the new primary curriculum | Discussion | Sir Jim Rose's recommendations for the new primary curriculum embed ICT across all areas of learning, with the firm expectation that pupils leave primary education as confident, independent users of ICT, now seen as an 'essential for learning and life'. In this session we'll explore how open source software can meet these aspirations. |
| 12:00-12:30 | Drew Buddie Royal Masonic School |
Moodle is my Towel | Presentation | |
| 2:00-2:30 | David Willmot St Thomas More Language College |
Freesoftwareforstudents CD and Website | Presentation/ Discussion | Ways of giving ALL students the tools they need for their education. |
| 2:30-3:00 | ||||
| 3:00-3:30 | ||||
| 3:30-4:00 |
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Is working smarter going for Open Source or out further to Open Educational Resources in the cloud or on Apps
Reading Harold Jarche's latest blog post From learning to working technologies - it is interesting to see how he uses the graph of Moore's Technology Adoption Curve and applies it to the Learning Technologies Industry.
It has lessons for the schools' ICT industry in the UK. The Late Adopters and Laggards are still stuck in the doldrums of LMS (VLEs) Compliance and features and functions.
Open Source at BETT 2010
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.
The Café
Well, we're interpreting café more in an Enlightenment Coffeehouse sense than a serious rival to Starbucks, but there will be rather good coffee on offer, so do stop by for a caffeine boost and a chat. There'll be sessions running throughout the show, so there should be plenty to chat about - simply edit the wiki if you'd like to host one of these yourself.
We're on stand L20, just on the edge of the 'Supporting Next Generation Learning' zone, near our supporters at Becta, as well as other public sector agencies such as the TDA, Ofsted and the DCSF, and just opposite our friends at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust.
Open Source Schools BETT Seminar
Open Source Schools will be presenting a BETT seminar on 'Creative Computing with Open Source' at 15:45 on Wednesday 13th January, led by Miles Berry of Roehampton University's School of Education and Ian Utting, Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing at the University of Kent. We will showcase a number of case studies about how school students are learning to program and contribute to the development of open source projects using a range of free, downloadable tools. Examples range from Scratch programming in primary schools, through Greenfoot in the secondary curriculum to the development of modules in PHP for web-based applications such as Moodle.
About BETT
BETT is the world's largest education technology exhibition. For four days in January, the education technology industry and establishment takes over Kensington Olympia to play host to close on 30,000 visitors from all sectors of education in the UK and further afield. It's quite a sobering sight to see how much money must be involved in education technology with lavish stands, glossy brochures and some not inexpensive handouts.
In Beyond Technology, David Buckingham writes:
"The BETT Show represents a prime example of what we might call the 'educational-technology complex' in action. While not quite as conspiratorial as the military-industrial one, this complex represents a powerful alliance between public and private interests ... There are considerable grounds for questioning the claim that the products on sale at BETT are as genuinely 'innovative' as the marketeers claim ... certainly, much of the educational content made available via these new media is far from novel: much of it is little more that a repackaging of the traditional curriculum."
BETT also has an extensive seminar programme, providing an easy way of keeping up to date on government initiatives, research and leading edge practice.
The last couple of years have seen a move towards teachers taking a more active role at BETT, with stands and events that step away from the usual format, such as 2006's Moodle stand ran by teachers, and TeachMeets in 2008 and 2009, with another scheduled for the Friday this year. It's in this spirit that the Open Source Café offers an alternative approach, with a rolling barcamp style programme of teachers and techies sharing their experience and expertise of open source.