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
Award Winning Open Source at Notre Dame High School
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.
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.
Open Source and Services
Dear All,
I have been teaching ICT for four years in a secondary school in the UK and have always been an open source advocate. Unfortunately the picture I have seen so far is that most of the closed source software vendors (such as Microsoft, RM and co) have nearly 100% of the market.
It is actually extremely difficult to convince people of the benefits of Open Source, except for the part that "it is free" (no charge). The problem is not the price, but the guarantee of support when things go wrong. Hence, preference is given to closed source solutions.
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
Free software CD available
Hi, I've updated www.freesoftwareforstudents.org.uk to add a link to the CD that has given our students FOSS applications.
Why so late 20th Century? you may well ask, but we found that giving pupils links to apps like openoffice.org, etc seemed to frighten some parents, "Download! that's illegal isn't it?" was a typical response. We found that by putting it onto a CD and putting a pretty lable on it gave it credibility. We now give it to all parents of yr7 before they arrive so they don't feel they have to buy expensive software for their kids.
REPRAP - resistance is futile ;)
Toby Borland of Magic Box SmartLabs at NESTA's Rebooting Britain conference demonstrating a REPRAP self-replicating 3D printer. Here he outlines what a REPRAP machine is. You can learn more about the REPRAP Open Hardware project here - with more resources to build your own. It might prove suitable as a school project....
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 !
Interview with Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino at Tinker.it
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino talks about the genesis of Arduino and the ethos behind Tinker.it - the consultancy arm behind Arduino.
Here she talks about the idea of Toy Hacking and shows several examples of ways toys can be modified for use with Arduino. She also demonstrates a Twitter clock and an Arduino teapot sensor.
Michael Kölling on Greenfoot
It's great to see community member Michael Kölling's new book, an Introduction to Programming with Greenfoot published.
Greenfoot is one of the new wave of graphical programming environments written with learners in mind. Like Scratch, Alice and E-Toys, it's open source software, and as with these other examples, it's a toolkit which lets learners start writing code for themselves, taking control of the computer and learning through problem solving and experiment, providing a powerful way of looking at the world. However, where Scratch, Alice and E-Toys all nod in the direction of the historically significant (and still used) Logo programming language, Greenfoot supports Java, with its users learning standard object-oriented programming in Java, admittedly within a development environment that makes working with interaction and graphics very easy. As Michael puts it in his introduction, "While Greenfoot is an educational environment, Java is not a toy language".
Roger Lang of CLEO on Blender
Roger Lang of CLEO and others discuss their work with artist Sumit Sarkar and pupils using the open source 3D modelling programme Blender in this video recorded for Open Source Schools by Leon Cych of Learn4Life.
Creating and maintaining Open Source Schemes of Work
Hi
I have just started a one day a week research project with the Specialist Schools Trust (under their iNet programme) - into the use / abuse of Web2.0 technologies.
As part of that (and an ongoing idea), I would like to start to address the duplication / wasted time & effort that all teachers find themselves in when writing / updating schemes of work.