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Activities

This area of the site contains updates and information about the activities of the SIGOSSEE project.
Newsletters

The SIGOSSEE Project will be releasing regular newsletters, which we will post for download here.

Newsletter 2, October 2004
Documentation and Forms
Below are some documents and forms of current interest.

Newsletter No 2 – October 2004

Special Interest Group Open Source Software for Education in Europe


The SIG is supported by the EU eLearning Action Plan, SIGOSSEE and JOIN! projects

Newsletter No 2– October 2004

1. About the newsletter

Welcome to the second edition of the Special Interest Group on Open Source Software for Education newsletter. The periodic newsletter is intended to provide information and a digest of the activities of the Special Interest Group and of the SIGOSSEE and JOIN projects.

We have been astounded at the level of interest in the project and SIG group activities over the past few months and are struggling to meet the many requests we have had for information and speakers. This newsletter provides details of some of the activities we are planning to meet that demand.

If you have an item you would like to include in the newsletter please send it to the editor, Graham Attwell, - graham@theknownet.com or add an item on the news page of the web site – www.ossite.org (for more details on how to do this see below).

2. Meeting of the Special Interest Group – 1 November 2004

The next meeting of the Special Interest Group will be in Barcelona on 1 and 2 of November 2004. The meeting is open to all members of the SIG and a warm welcome is extended to all those interested in the use of Open Source Software in education. The meeting will be held in conjunction with the EC Framework 6 UNFOLD project, which is researching and developing the use of standards for e-learning software and applications.

The first day of the workshop will be devoted to the development of the projects and the SIG groups.

The draft agenda is as follows:

  • 9:30 Welcome to the workshop and review of the agenda
  • 9:45 Reports on project activities
  • 10:15 Report on SIG membership and development of membership service
  • 10:45 Coffee
  • 11:00 Meetings of SIGOSEE working groups
  • 12:00 Report on JOIN product directory
  • 12:45 Report on work on best practices
  • 13:00 Developing information services
  • 14:00 Lunch
  • 15:30 Review of working groups and planning of future activities
  • 16:30 Planning of future workshop
  • 17:30 Project dissemination
  • 18:30 End of Day 1

3. Public Seminar – 2 November 2004

The second day of the workshop will be a public seminar focusing on issues in the development of OSS for education and on standards. Working languages will be English, Spanish and Catalan – although morning keynote contributions will be predominately in English. The preliminary agenda is as follows

Draft Agenda, SIGOSSEE Public Seminar, 2nd November 2004

MORNING SESSION

9:30 Coffee

10:00 Welcome and introduction to SIGOSSEE

THEME: OPEN CONTENT

  • Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Grupo de Sistemas y Comunicaciones, ESCET, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid
  • Francesc Busquets, XTEC, Generalitat de Catalunya
  • Dirk Stieglitz. University of Bremen, Germany
  • Mihkel Pilv, Miksike LearningFolders, Estonia

Short break

THEME: ORGANISATIONAL MODELS

  • Raymond Elferink, RayCom (Open Source developer) Netherlands
  • Tsystems.

13:00 LUNCH (there are many cheap restaurants nearby)

15:00 Afternoon Session

THEME: OPEN SOURCE LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

  • Fred de Vries. Open University of the Netherlands
  • JOIN project, Alexandra Toedt. University of Cologne, Marta Capdevila. University of Vigo

THEME: OPEN SOURCE INITIATIVES IN EDUCATION AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

  • The Andalucía experience, Manel Loosveldt. Ajuntament de Barcelona.
  • Cristina Barrado Vicerrectora de la UPC: La Càtedra de Programari Lliure de la UPC

Short break

THEME: OPEN SOURCE AND OPEN E-LEARNING STANDARDS

  • Dai Griffiths, UNFOLD Project, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

18.00 Summary

18.15 Close

The workshop will be held at the Universitat Pompeu Fabre in Barcelona. There are many flights to Barcelona airport from throughout Europe.
More details will be posted on the web site – www.ossite.org over the next two weeks. For queries please contact Dai Griffiths at david.griffiths@upf.edu.
To help us plan the meeting could you please fill in and return by email the form at the end of this newsletter if you are able to attend.

4. Working groups

As we told you in the last newsletter the SIG has formed four research groups
The details of those work groups and their conveners is as follows:
  1. Standards and architectures for OSS – Soren Johanssen (New Media Lab) - johansen@newclearmedia.dk
  2. User requirements and usability issues in the development of OSS (Tim Hall, University of Limerick) - Timothy.Hall@ul.ie
  3. Social, cultural and legal issues in OSS Joachim Dietrich, (ITB, University of Bremen) - dittrich@uni-bremen.de
  4. Organisation and management issues, sustainability and support infrastructural needs for OSS (Dai Griffith, University of Pompeu Fabre) - david.griffiths@upf.edu.

Many of you have expressed an interest in being involved in the working group activities and we have spent some time discussing how we can effectively support this involvement. We have decided to launch a series of time bound on-line discussions, with group conveners producing a short discussion paper. The outcomes of the discussions will be incorporated into the working group reports and circulated to all members. The planned timing of the discussions is given below:

November - Organisation and management issues, sustainability and support infrastructural needs for OSS – Dai Griffiths and Raymond Elferink
December - Social, cultural and legal issues in OSS - Joachim Dietrich and Peter Becker,
February - User requirements and usability issues in the development of OSS Tim Hall and George Bekiaridis
March - Standards and architectures for OSS - Mike Malloch and Soren Johanssen

One possible outcome of this work would be an annotated bibliography.

We will email you prior to the launch of each event and further details can be found on the website. If you would like to assist in the preparation of the initial discussion document please contact the relevant convener.

5. Publications – Key Issues

As I said in the introduction to this newsletter, we have been somewhat overwhelmed by requests for information and support in implementing OSS in education. Many have asked us where they can find written information. For that reason, we have decided to produce a series of briefing documents – to be called Key issues. The following list shows the range of topics we intend to cover and the authors responsible
  • What is an LMS – Alexandra Toedt
  • How do I run Microsoft on Linux – Dai Griffiths
  • What are OSS security options
  • How do I substitute Microsoft Office with OSS (Open Office)? – Dai Griffith
  • How do I get OSS in my organisation – Dai Griffith
  • What is Sourceforge and what does it do – Raymond Elferink
  • What are standards and why are they important – Dai Griffith
  • How do open source software licences work – Alexandra Toedt
  • How do I get learning content which operates in OSS environments – Graham Attwell
  • What are the alternatives to running a Learning Management System – Graham Attwell
  • What skills and support do I needs to operate os for learning – Raymond Elferink
  • Is OSS really cheaper than proprietary software – Raymond Elferink

Graham Attwell is to edit the series and RayCom will be responsible for the design.
How you can help? Would you be interested in writing or co-authoring one of these short publications? If so please contact the named author. Or have we missed something out? This is designed as an open publication series. Please feel free to add suggestions and to submit texts for publication in the series. The series will initially be developed in English. We urgently need volunteers to translate the briefing series into different languages. For more details please contact Graham Attwell – graham@theknownet.com. The publications will be produced under the Creative Commons Licence.

6. The web site

The rapid growth of the SIG has put our web site and services under some strain. We are constantly seeking to imporve the site and plan a series of further changes over the coming few months. You may have already noticed that it is now possible to scroll through SIG member details if you are logged in and the member has checked the box fort their details to be shared. In the coming period we hope to develop on this by encouraging the formation of regional and national groups of members of the SIG.

Also do not forget to check out the growing resource section on the site – in the future we will try to improve access through better search facilities.
Do not forget the discussion section. This has been upgraded in the last two months and now uses the popular phpBB-board. All members are free to initiate a discussion. For now members need to register seperately for the discussion section. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

7. Meetings and conferences

We have given presentations on Open Source Software on a number of events and conferences over the past few months. Including the JOIN conference in Köln, IMAC in Duisburg, K2 Summit in Amsetrdam, the European Conference on Education research (ECER) in Crete, and the ICL e2004 conference in Villach, Austria.
We very much welcome invitations to present the project – if you have any ideas please get in touch with any of the Steering group members (see section 9 below).

8. Form for SIGOSSEE workshop – Barcelona, Spain, November 1-2

If you plan to come to the SIGOSSEE workshop in Barcelona, November 1-2, please send the information requested in the following brief form in an email message to Graham Attwell – graham@theknownet.com.

Form for SIGOSSEE workshop – Barcelona, Spain, November 1-2

I will attend the SIGOSSEE workshop 1-2 November

I will attend the SIGOSSEE seminar 2 November

Name:

Organisation:

Email address:

9. Steering group

If you have any question, remarks or ideas about SIGOSSEE, please contact any member of the SIGOSSEE Steering Group:

Graham Attwell (graham@theknownet.com)

Raymond Elferink (raymond@raycom.com)

Dai Griffiths (david.griffiths@upf.edu)

Alexandra Tödt (alexandra.toedt@uni-koeln.de)

 

Newsletter No 1 – May 2004

Special Interest Group Open Source Software for Education in Europe


The Sig group is supported by the EU Action Plan
SIGOSSEE and JOIN projects

Newsletter No 1 – May 2004

1. About the newsletter

Welcome to the first edition of the Special Interest Group on Open Source Software for Education newsletter. It is planned to produce a copy of the newsletter every two months. The newsletter will contain information and an update on the activities of the special Interest Group. In the future we hope to extend more content about OSS itself.
If you have an item you would like to include in the newsletter please send it to the editor, Graham Attwell, - graham@theknownet.com or add a News Item on the web site – www.ossite.org (see the how-to note at the end of the newsletter).

2. Meeting of the Special Interest Group

The next meeting of the Special Interest Group will be on Wednesday 2 and Thursday 3 of June in Limerick in Ireland.
Please note that this is a change of venue.  The previous plan had been to hold a pre-conference seminar in conjunction with the Irish Technology in Education (EdTech) conference. However, some controversy has erupted over the inclusion of the US Department of Army's Director of Education, Ms. L. Dian Stoskopf, as the conference's keynote speaker.  This has led to the withdrawal of a number of participants. In view of this, the project steering committee felt it better to relocate the workshop and seminar.
Members of the European Action Plan project have funding to attend the meeting. There is also some funding to assist with travel expenses for other members of the SIG who want to attend the seminar and SIG meeting. Preference will be given to applicants from Ireland. For queries about funding contact Graham Attwell.
The seminar and SIG meeting will take place at Limerick University. More details on the venue will be sent out next week.
Delegates to he workshop should book their own accommodation. There is a hotel near the University called the Kilmurry Lodge Hotel – www.kilmurrylodge.com. There is also a wide range of accommodation available in Limerick – including hotels, bed and breakfast and pubs.  Information about accommodation in Limerick can easily be found on the internet – see for example www.limerick.com
The nearest airport is Shannon. Limerick can also be reached by train from Dublin. Participants in the SIG group should aim to arrive in Limerick on Tuesday 1 June as the meeting starts at 9.30 on the Wednesday.

To help us plan the meeting, could those of you who will be attending please send Graham an email including the information indicated in the form at the end of this newsletter.

3. Agenda

The draft agenda for the SIG group meeting and seminar is as follows.

Special Interest Group on Open Source Software for Education in Europe (SIGOSSEE)

Second project workshop – Limerick, Ireland
June 2 – 3, 2004

Draft Agenda
Day 1 – June 2
9.30    Welcome to the workshop – Tim Hall (University of Limerick)
9.45    Introduction to the workshop agenda Graham Attwell (KnowNet)
10.00    Brief reports on work of the research groups: (10 Minutes each)

    a) Standards and architectures for OSS – Soren Johanssen (New Media Lab)
    b) User requirements and usability issues in the development of OSS - Tim Hall (University of Limerick)
    c) Social, cultural and legal issues in OSS - Joachim Dietrich, (ITB, University of Bremen)
    d) Organisation and management issues, sustainability and support infrastructural needs for OSS - Dai Griffith (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

10.40     Coffee
11.00    Meeting of working groups
12.30    Report on progress in building the SIG consideration of next steps    - Graham Attwell (KnowNet)
1300     Lunch
1400      Developing the directory of Open source products - Alexandra Tödt (University of Cologne)

1500     Public seminar.

The seminar will be chaired by Timothy Hall from the University of Limerick. Speakers will be Raymond Elferink from RayCom, a Dutch Open Source software company and Dai Griffiths, an expert on standards, from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.

The seminar will be followed by a reception and refreshments.


Day 2
9.15     Review of day 1
9.30     Identifying best practice –  Ferran Cabrer (CONSEN)
10.00     Report from working groups
10.45    Coffee
11.00    Developing OSsite – demonstration of new functionality – Mike Malloch (KnowNet)
12.00    Report on conference – Alexandra Tödt (University of Cologne)

12.30    Management and administration – Raymond Elferink and Sara Zondergeld (RayCom)
13.00     Planning next workshops
13.45     End of meeting


4. The Special Interest Group

Many thanks to all of you who have joined the Special Interest Group. To be honest, we have been overwhelmed by the response. Our aim was to gain 150 members over 2 years but we already have 120 members signed up in 3 months. One item on the agenda for the meeting is to discuss how we can best organise the SIG. This newsletter is a first step towards this. In the next few months we hope to establish national or regional groups and will contact SIG members further on this.

5. Working groups

The SIG has formed four research groups
To become involved in the work of these groups contact the conveners:

    a) Standards and architectures for OSS – Søren Johanssen (New Media Lab) - johansen@newmedia-lab.dk
    b) User requirements and usability issues in the development of OSS - Tim Hall (University of Limerick) – timothy.hall@ul.ie
    c) Social, cultural and legal issues in OSS - Joachim Dietrich, (ITB, University of Bremen) - dittrich@uni-bremen.de
    d) Organisation and management issues, sustainability and support infrastructural needs for OSS - Dai Griffith (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) - david.griffiths@upf.edu

The work of the groups will be published on OSsite as soon as it becomes available. If you would like to join any of the working groups or contribute to their work please contact the relevant convener.

6. Study of effective practice


Ferran Cabrer from CONSEN is organising a study of best practice in the use of Open Source Software in education. If you have any examples of good practice you think should be included please contact Ferran - Ferran@econsen.com.

7. Products Directory


Alexandra Tödt from the JOIN project is organising a directory of Open Source Virtual Learning Environments. For more details please contact Alexandra - alexandra.toedt@uni-koeln.de

8. Web site tools


Over the past three months we have been enhancing the functionality of the SIG web site – www.ossite.org. The site has been developed using Plone. However, KnowNet has extensively customised the Content Management system. All members have access to the tools for creating content through you home page whilst logged in. In some cases there are short cuts as on the news page to create content in line.

To prevent spamming, content is moderated. Please do feel free to experiment with the tools and add material to the site. If you feel the need for new navigation buttons we will be happy to create these. If you have any queries please contact Mike Malloch from KnowNet – mike@theknownet.com

9. Presentations and collaboration


If you would like a presentation about the ideas and work of the SIG please contact Graham Attwell – graham@theknownet.com. We are also very happy to collaborate with other projects and organisations. Please get in touch.


10. Form for SIGOSSEE workshop – Limerick, Ireland, June 2-3


If you plan to come to the SIGOSSEE workshop in Limerick, June 2-3, please send the information requested in the following brief form in an email message to Graham Attwell – graham@theknownet.com.

** How to add a news item to ossite:

To add your own news item to http://www.ossite.org, just click the ‘Create a new item’ button on the frontpage of the site.  Once you have filled in the details aand saved the news item, you will also have to ‘submit’ it for review before it appears in the main news and events listings; to do so, choose ‘submit’ from the ‘State’ drop-down menu at the top right of the content area.
 

Form for SIGOSSEE workshop – Limerick, Ireland June 2–3

I will attend the SIGOSSEE workshop 2-3 June

I will attend the SIGOSEE seminar 2 June

Name


Organisation


Email address



Seminars

This area of the site provides access to the results of the SIGOSSEE seminars.
Seminars Athens Seminar
The presentations at the Athens seminar are provided here
Activities SIGOSSEE launched in Brussels 1 comments
Last week we were invited by The European Commission to Brussels for what they call a concertation meeting. The meeting brought together some 100 representatives of the European Minerva and eLearning Action Plan projects (Minerva is the e-learning strand of the Socrates education programme).
Activities SIGOSSEE.ppt [ Download ] (SIGOSSEE.ppt - 85.00 Kb ) Preview
The PowerPoint file provides an introduction to the SIGOSSEE project. It was presnetd at the European Commision Concertation meeting in Brussels in February.
Activities Report from open Source Conference in Malaga
Kel Harvey from Knownet is at the Open Source Conference in Malaga, Spain. he has sent the following report from the conference
Activities First Inventory - eLearning and Open Source Software (OSS) Projects in Europe [ Download ] application/msword 175616 bytes
Shortly before our kick-off meeting in Bremen I started making a first inventory about eLearning and Open Source Software Projects in Europe (I forgot to brought it with me on the laptop). It is by no means complete, I think, and probably you will find that projects or platforms you know of or whatever are missing, not applicable (or maybe even not accurate described). But that is why it is called a first inventory :-) I gave Alexandra at the meeting in Bremen a copy of an interesting paper by a Rob Reynolds who wrote about advantages and disadvantages of Open Source Courseware implementations. It is included here (with the URL as well). Furthermore I included a link to an already made list of fifty Open Source Platforms in Spanish. Sara Zondergeld (Organisation & Management Issues group)
Activities EuCluster meeting, Gremmelin, Germany
The first meeting of the Competence Development Group formed at the final meeting of the EUCluster project in Florence last year is meeting in Gremmelin, Germany, this week.
Activities Pictures: SIGOSSEE meetings
This is a photo album which organises photos from SIGOSSEE meetings and events
Activities Notes of Limerick meeting [ Download ] (report.rtf - 122.58 Kb )
The attched rtf file contains notes of the SIGOSSEE meeting in Limerick
Activities Notes from the steering group meeting [ Download ] (Notes on the SIGOSSEE Steer.rtf - 141.56 Kb )
The downloadable rtf fiel contain notes form the SIGOSSEE steering committee meeting in Mallorca in August.
Activities Newsletter No 2 – October 2004
Activities Newsletter No 1 – May 2004
Activities Seminars
This area of the site provides access to the results of the SIGOSSEE seminars.
Activities Notes: SIGOSSEE meetings
Last modified 2004-05-14 02:27 PM
 

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