SIGOSSEE Project News

Welcome to the fifth 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.

Interest in the project remains high with speakers form the project attending many meetings and conferences throughout Europe. This newsletter provides details of some of the activities we are undertaking or are planning for the future. It also includes notice of the call for papers for our conference in November. Please go to the special conference web site now!

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 login and reply to this post.

Please note that you can read the complete newsletter as html here, by clicking one of the links for 'extended text' or 'permalink'

Extended text for this entry:

Our web sites

Main site

www.ossite.org

Wiki

wiki.ossite.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Conference

www.openconference.net/index.php?cf=3

Next Meeting of the Special Interest Group

The next meeting of the Special Interest Group will be in Stockholm, Sweden on 15 and 16 of September 2005. 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 first day of the workshop will be a public seminar. In the following text, Peter Becker explains the aim of the seminar.

A background to the seminar

Two interconnected societal processes are focused in the seminar:

1. digital content production (publishers, media, museums, authorities etc)
2. content use in educational context

In focus here is youth education regarded as societal processes where using, creating, reshaping and sharing digital information in all media formats is an integrated part of the learning process. To create, store, reuse and share digital information takes technical assets like storing formats, platforms for editing and distributing, and juridical regulations, laws and licenses.

When in the seminar - and below - a number of cases are presented, questions are asked on uses and work processes, as well as framing technologies and licenses. Educators and institutions must pose demands on technologies and licenses, as those are governing the conditions for users and uses.

Aims

The aim of the seminar is to discuss ”open content, platforms and standards for Education” in order to formulate a set of focus points for a continued national and European development work. The seminar will stage a dialogue between actors in educational institutions using and sharing information on one hand and those governing or developing a framework for this, including technical and juridical levels, on the other hand.

The overarching perspective of the seminar is that learning processes demand access to illustration and source material, to authentic or at least realistic case stories in diverse media formats. Learning is regarded as a social process studying and analysing authentic and teaching material, followed by formulating and communicating/sharing results and conclusions with others. Students and teachers are regarded as both media consuming and producing individuals in dialogue and interplay with others.

From this perspective, materials - texts and media, all cultural and media output of the society, are shared resources that constitute integral parts of all learning processes. So issues are vital of access to cultural heritage and media resources through open services, proprietary services and all hybrid and intermediate forms.

In all those areas questions should be raised on

1. Accessibility to media resources
2. Possibility of users using, manipulating and re-working media material
3. Possibility of users re-distributing derivative media material

All three in

• Juridical terms – rights of access
• Technical terms – standardised access and formats and ease of use
• Economic terms – fair price level
• Quality of media resources, and finally
• Sustainability of media resources

Note: This implicitly formulates a set of terms we propose to use in defining Open Content.

The main question of the seminar is: How is the interplay between, on one hand, the cultural and media output of society and its uses in educational contexts and on the other the development of digital media techniques, production and distribution systems, formats and licenses? How could technical, juridical and economic terms of public media resources be better tailored to the needs of educational system?

The seminar is prepared with a number of short presentations, each accompanied by a relevant text resource. These resources will be made available before the seminar and a compilation web accessible after the session, including some video interviews.

All participants are asked to produce a reference document on his/her contribution. You will be individually contacted in order to discuss this.

The seminar will start at 9.00 am and will end at 16.30 pm.

Agenda

Day one of the Workshop

Coffee and registration

1. SIGOSSEE, E-learning, standards and openness

Opening of seminar and brief SIGOSSEE, project within EU e-learning programme

• Graham Attwell, co-ordinator SIGOSSEE, Knownet, Opening Frontiers in E-learning – open Source and Pedagogy. 30 min
• Dai Grifftih, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Why are standards important in OSS. 30 min

2. Case studies

2.1 Open Source in education and Best Practise for OSS in Schools - Swedish and Norwegian experiences

Open Source Software – open source access and freedom of development, e.g. Linux and OpenOffice, has brought new competition to the software market, and created real alternatives to educational institutions. In Norway a tailored Linux School distribution has been created. In Sweden, national authorities are running a project for Linux and open systems. And some municipalities have migrated to Linux, like pioneering city of Motala, or to Open Office under Windows like Sundsvall.

Ref Daniel Antonsson, The Swedish National Agency for School Improvement

Ref Knut Yrvin, Skolelinux, Norway

2.2 Museums and network access to content

Project Windows to Museums /Museifönstret

Ref Henrik Summanen, Anna Engquist, Historiska museet

Also educational processes have been developed where students build cultural heritage resources, like case of JAMTLI, Museum of Jämtland.

Ref Ann-Charlotte Ernehed, Minnesbanken, Jamtli

2.3 Public media resources made accessible to educators

New models for distribution and licensing. Case of swedish learning resources, in a variety of media formats, with different levels of access, open to use from students and teachers. From media like daily newspapers, national TV etc. Language learning in a media rich environment, from Botkyrka municipality.

Ref Krister Widell , UR/Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company

Ref Peter Widengren, Botkyrka, Paulina Gustavsson, Dupoint

2.4 The Open Access initiative and the crisis in research publishing

Academic research is to a large extent publicly funded, but are results open to all? Increasing costs and delays of academic journals publishing has stimulated electronic publishing. Important are Budapest initiative and Open Access, now also adopted by Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet, VR).

Giving access to academic research. New distribution, review and license models.

Ref Björn Thomasson, Swedish Research Council, Eva Muller, ub.uu.se,

Ellen Jacobsson, Uppsala universitet, Yvonne Hultman-Özek, ScieCom/Swedish Resource Centre for Scientific Communication, Lunds universites.

2.5 Users creating content: Netbased open encyplopedias, Wiki concept

New chains of production on the net. Cases of Project Runeberg (Sw Gutenberg project) with literary source material, WikiPedia and Susning.nu med öppna encyklopedier mm.

Ref Lars Aronsson, Susning.nu, Projekt Runeberg

Lunch

2.6 Mixed Platforms and Environments

National Agency for Flexible Learning, CFL address flexible adult learning, combining digital learning resources, hub services including metadata and import/export based on standards for learning objects and an infrastructure consisting of learning platforms where learning resources are imported and possibly modified for use in teaching.

Jointly Intel Corp and city of Karlstad introduced portables and wireless in school, through a portal for sharing work, supporting teacher co-operation and planning.

Fronter is developing a popular LMS, largely based on OSS

Microsoft is including learning resources, packaged and modularised, and virtual meeting places for schools, largely based on proprietary but widespread products.

SUN is offering its StarOffice as well as other open products to schools

MySQL, Kaj Arnö. MySQL offers database products both for enterprise and community users.

Ref Sören Thornell, Henrik Swedbäck, Ulf Sandström, National Agency for Flexible Learning, CFL

Ref Intel, Fronter, MS, SUN, IBM, Novell, Apple, MySQL

3 Perspectives on open content

3.1 Licenses

Open Content relates to both technical, juridical and economic terms. The Creative Commons initiative has brought forward a set of licenses, allowing environments with mixed open and proprietary documents, free or not. Licenses are crucial to development, and combinations of open and proprietary forms are a must . Thus e.g. Dual Licensing means a possibility to combine open code (possibly free) published for example under GPL (open propagated license), with licenses for proprietary/closed solutions.

Ref Mathias Klang, Karl Jonsson Creative Commons and University of Gothenburg

Coffee break

3.2 Squeak and Croquet, a future operative environment for open work

Squeak and Croquet is a new generation of open digital environments, where all resources are open and accessible, under (open) development by Computer pioneer Alan Kay et al.

Ref Göran Krampe

3.3 Open content and value creation

Magnus Cederberg, graduate student at KTH and program manager in the Services and IT implementation department at the National Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems, Vinnova

3.4 Who defines ICT standards for education?

Open development is based on open standards and interoperability. Eg standardised file formats (like gif, jpeg, png; mpeg etc) or proprietary formats with free decoders (like pdf) has had an increasing importance. Strategies for soft infrastructure at the Swedish National Agency for School Improvement presented.

Ref Peter Karlberg, the Swedish National Agency for School Improvement

3.5 Teachers, publishers and learning resources in educational processes

The concept of teaching resources must be widened. What was once books, grew into learning packages, with source material, overviews, tasks, tests, student and teacher guides. With the Internet and personal learning styles, levels and courses, those are falling apart. Entering media resources, museum materials, public and institutional information and net resources, without guarantees, quality check, often partial. Perhaps the term learning resources is relevant. How is educational system changing its use of those learning resources? How are publishers responding? Lektion.se is a web site with rapidly growing free resources of shared teacher material.

Ref Staffan Selander, The Stockholm Institute of Education, HLS, Rolf Ekelund, Ekelunds förlag, Hans Almgren, The Swedish Association for Educational Writers, SLFF, Per Malkert of web site Lektion.se

4 Conclusions of the seminar

Summing up. Sharp formulation of future tasks and agenda for continued work on open content on national and European level.

Ref Government Strategy group, Sweden and SIGOSSEE

5 Closing of seminar

Stockholm workshop, day two

The second day of the workshop will focus on the work of the SIGOSSEE project, and on the organisation of the Open Source in Education conference in the Netherlands in November.

Draft agenda, day two

9.30

Introduction to the workshop - Graham Attwell

9.45

Reports from the working groups

10.30

SIGOSSEE Case studies

11.00

Coffee

11.20

The SIGOSSEE project - what we promised and what remains to be done

12.30

Lunch

14.00

How do we report on our work?

15.00

SIGOSSEE final report - the formal requirements

15.30

Life after SIGOSSEE - where next for supporting Open Source Software in education

16.45

End of workshop

Full details of the workshop location, travel and hotel can be found on the sigossee web site – www.ossite.org.

For any queries about the organization of the workshop please contact Peter Becker - peter.becker@tii.se

Conference

Open Source Software (OSS) is of increasing interest in education. It can provide better quality software, increased pedagogic choice, enhanced flexibility and new business and social models. Furthermore, the idea of Open Source is being extended into other areas including the production of e-learning materials.

This conference is organised by two European sponsored projects, SIGOSSEE and JOIN, which have been investigating the potential of Open Source and providing services for educational institutions wishing to implement Open Source products, together with the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL) which has a long track record of innovation in e-learning

The conference focuses on a number of major issues in Open Source in education in Europe including:

• Learning with Open Source
• Open standards for e-learning
• Sustainability strategies – managing open source
• Open content, issues and implications

The conference is open to all interested in Open Source in education including researchers, managers, teacher and trainers, policy makers and developers.

We have had a tremendous response to calls for papers for the Open Source Software in education conference, to be held at the Open University of the Netherlands on November 14 and 15.

After the refereeing process, we have finally selected 36 papers for presentation. there will also be 16 project demonstrations and 2 hands in workshops. Key note speakers include Stephen Downes from canada, Graham Attwell from SIGOSSEE and Alexandra Toedt from eh JOIN project.

The full agenda will be published at the end of August.

There is a limitation on the number of places available at he conference so we recommend early registration. You can register on line at :

• www.openconference.net/index.php?cf=3

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 – Mike Malloch (Knownet) – mike@theknownet.com
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.

Further details can be found on the website. If you would like to assist in the working groups please contact the relevant convener

Publications

We are currently working on the production of a series of briefing documents –called Key issues. We have set up a wiki for collaborative writing on these topics http://wiki.ossite.org/index.php?title=Main_Page - The following list shows the range of topics we intend to cover and the authors responsible but feel free to add your own.

• 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 – Ray 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 OSS for learning - Ray Elferink
• Is OSS really cheaper than proprietary software - Ray Elferink

Graham Attwell is editing the series and Raycom are responsible for the design.

How you can help?

Go to the site – edit and add to existing publications or add your own. 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 is presently 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 are covered by the Creative Commons Licence.