Open CPD?
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.
Ubuntu User Day
User Days was created to be a set of courses offered during a one day period to teach the beginning or intermediate Ubuntu user the basics to get them started with Ubuntu. User Days is a series of online courses where you can:
Moodle Moot 2010 Call for papers
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.
Leeds Moodle Conference
From http://www.schooljotter.com/showpage.php?id=58313
9th February 2010, Hilton Hotel, Leeds
Moodle Moot 2010 Announced
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.
“Question Time” on Open Source – Bournemouth
From the BCS Open Source Specialist Group. Details at http://ossg.bcs.org/2009/09/20/question-time-on-open-source-bournemouth-...
In the style of the BBC program “Question Time”, join us for an evening of Q & A on Open Source software. BCS Dorset Branch welcomes the Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) – for an entertaining evening debating this hot topic. Is Linux the answer to everything?
Creative Computing and Open Source: BETT Seminar
Open Source Schools will be presenting a BETT seminar on 'Creative Computing with Open Source' at 15:45 on Wednesday 13th January. 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.
The BETT Open Source Café
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.
Update: Press release below
Update: session sign-up wiki online, plus further details.
Open Source Schools will also be presenting a BETT seminar on 'Creative Computing with Open Source' at 15:45 on Wednesday 13th January. 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.
Dale Jones on Barriers and Enablers to Open Source in the classroom
More from the Bletchley Park LA Seminar: this time Dale Jones, School Improvement Consultant for Shropshire County Council (and former teacher, and the genius behind ethink.org.uk WordPress MU Hosting...) on some of the barriers and enablers to open source in the classroom.
Video c/o Leon Cych at Learn 4 Life; other formats available at http://blip.tv/file/2796107
K-12 Open Minds 2009
"Join us again on October 6th and 7th 2009 in Michigan City (Indiana) for the third annual K-12 Open Minds Conference about Open Source in K-12 Education, now Open AND Free !
Seaweedstudio on Arduino and Toy Hacking
Jessica and Tracy talk about the process they used in an arduino workshop with young girls 8 - 11 earlier this year.
Arduino has its own development environment (based on Processing) - so effectively you code it in 'arduino'. You can also talk to arduino indirectly via other programming languages such as processing, maxmsp, flash.
There is a growing Arduino movement in the UK and workshops are growing out of the work done by the people at Tinker.it (which we will showcase in another video) and the University of East London as well as Toy Hacking workshops in London at places like Music Hackday.
A lot of this work is basd on the Lillypad Arduino kit invented by Leah Buechley from the Hi-Low tech group at MIT a growing e-textiles movement.
(Video follows...)
Open Source and History Teaching
We would be very interested to hear from any history teachers / coordinators who are using open source in one form or another to support history teaching.
Perhaps you know examples of Wordpress blogs, Moodle courses or Mediawiki content with a history focus? Audacity being used in living history projects? Are there some other interesting aplications out there? Open source timeline software or genealogy applications being used in schools?
Branching databases
My science coordinator has just asked me if we have a branching database program on our Edubuntu thin client system; we don't. Anyone have any recommendations?
The idea is like that of a classification key - a series of yes/no questions which the children create, and later respond to, to identify which of a set of objects is which. See, eg http://www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/subjects/science/databases/ . They are mentioned in the QCA KS2 ICT scheme of work, but not, as far as I can see, in the post-Rose curriculum.
Networked Theatre - open source enabling creative learning
C&T is an eclectic company of drama professionals, technologists, teachers, web designers, animators and writers working with partner schools all over England to bring new, creative learning practice to students and teachers through a blend of drama, applied learning and digital technology.
Open Source and D&T
Are you using open source software to teach the Design and Technology curriculum, either at primary or secondary level? Do you know of anyone who is? We'd love to have some stories about this for the website if so! We'd also be interested in any software you'd recommend in relation to D&T for the software directory, links to stories elsewhere, or even full case studies.
The up and coming area of open source hardware is also one for which we'd be very interested to hear about any school related uses.
Do please post anything D&T related via the Create Content link on the menu.
e-Learning Foundation - charity support for 1:1 ICT at home and at school (UK schools)
Hi there - I've recently discovered this forum, and was suprised not to find a reference to our charity yet, so I hope people might find a little more information handy. Particularly, this may be of interest to:
Software Project Hosting
How about providing a hosting service for software development aimed specifically at UK schools.
Sugar on a Stick
Sugar, the operating system and GUI for OLPC's truly innovative XO-1 laptops is now available, in beta at least, as a bootable USB stick, allowing any netbook, laptop or desktop to run this amazing re-interpretation of educational computing.
Sugar is built on the idea of activities rather than programs, with an interface designed to be 'discoverable', ie one which children can learn through play and experimentation. Sugar also affords a social experience of computing, as activities are sharable with other students using the same mesh server, thus allowing collaborative text editing, browsing, graphics and indeed programming.