Special Interest Group Open Source Software for Education in Europe

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

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

• 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

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)