Tuesday 5 April 2011 in London

Draft programme and speakers announced

What it is

This conference has been designed by school leaders and others in the Open Source Schools' community to showcase to school leadership teams the best of educational free and open source software whether used alone or blended with proprietary software.

Why you should come

Using open source software in your school will allow you to:

• save money
• use technology in a way that is aligned to your vision of teaching and learning
• have greater flexibility in the way ICT is used.

Deploying open source is something many schools do in house, and support is available from the community, from many local authorities, partner schools and from local SMEs. Many schools prefer open source because of the rapid way the tools develop, adopting new technologies without schools having to pay for an upgrade. Others like the way the tools can be tailored to specific needs or integrated with other systems in school, such as linking an open source VLE with a proprietary MIS.

The conference will provide:

• an overview of the state of the art in open technology for education
• an opportunity to share experiences with other school leaders who are forming their Open Source ICT strategy
• advice and guidance from leading figures drawn from industry, education and government
• facts which dispel myths about open source software
• examples of how to make real financial savings
• cast-iron case studies from schools using open source to make whole school improvements.

Registration details can be found at http://openingopportunities.eventbrite.com/