SIGOSSEE Project News

Welcome to newsletter #3

Welcome to the third 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.

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.

Extended text for this entry:

Next Meeting: Athens 21-22 February

The next meeting of the Special Interest Group will be in Athens on 21 and 22 of February 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 devoted to the development of the projects and the SIG groups.

The draft agenda is as follows:

Day one:

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

12.0

Report on JOIN product directory

12.45

Report on work on best practices

13.0

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

Athens workshop, day two:

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 and Greek and we are hoping to provide interpretation between the languages.

The public seminar will take place at the Crecotel Athens Imperial Hotel. The web site for the seminar can be found at-http://www.ergonkek.gr/sigossee/ Delegates can register on line at the site.

We are recommending the King Jason Hotel. The hotel is located in Athens Center, 150 meters from the Metaxourgeio Metro Station and about 5 minutes from ERGON's training cente where the project meeting will take place on the 21st February.

The hotel's web site is :

http://www.douros-hotels.com/htr.asp?hotel_id=3#

For any queries about the organization of the meetinga and seminar please contact:

George Bekiaridis - beiker@ergoplan.gr

Preliminary agenda, day two:

9.00

Welcome and introduction to SIGOSSEE

9:30

The Pedagogy of e-learning, - Graham Attwell, Knownet

10:00

The SCORM 2004 specification - Alexandra Toedt

10:30

Simos Retalis - Department of Technology Education and Digital Systems, University of Piraeus

11:00

e-Paideia Net - George Tsagarisianos, Lambrakis Research Foundation

11:30

Panel discussion with the presenters

12:00

Short Break - Coffee

12:30

Cambridge ICT Core Certification with Open Source Software - Thalis Chaidopoulos, Vellum Educational Services

13:00

e-ClassK. - Tsibanis, University of Athens, eLearning Team

13:30

Developing elearning Lessons - George Bekiaridis, ERGON kek

14:00

Panel discussion with the presenters

14:30

Summary and concluding remarks

14:45

Close

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:

a) Standards and architectures for OSS

(Mike Malloch, Knownet) - mike@theknownet.com

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, 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. The following list shows the range of topics we intend to cover and the authors responsible

1. What is an LMS

- Alexandra Toedt

2. How do I run microsoft on linux

- Dai Griffiths

3. What are OSS security options

4. How do I substitute Microsoft Office with OSS (Open Office)?

- Dai Griffith

5. How do I get OSS in my organisation

- Dai Griffith

6. What is Sourceforge and what does it do

Ray Elferink

7. What are standards and why are they important

- Dai Griffith

8. How do open source software licences work

- Alexandra Toedt

9. How do I get learning content which operates in OSS environments

- Graham Attwell

10. What are the alternatives to running a Learning Management System

- Graham Attwell

11. What skills and support do I needs to operate os for learning

- Ray Elferink

12. Is OSS really cheaper than proprietary software

- Ray Elferink

Graham Attwell is editing 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.

Meetings & conferences

Attention all Finnish members. Graham Attwell will be undertaking a short speaking tour in Finland in April on behalf of the SIG. He is speaking at the following workshops and conferences:

1. Key note speech at the TEKES seminar in Helsinki -"Knowledge Creation in Open Content" - 19th of April.
2. Workshop dealing with OSS in education issues in Haemeenlinna 20th of April
3. Key note speech at ITK conference - 21st April.

For more details on these events contact tarja.immonen

tarja.immonen@teknologiakeskus.com

We welcome invitations to present the project

if you have any ideas please get in touch.

The web site

The web site has undergone a major makeover in the last few weeks.

The original design was creaking under pressure of the very valuable content being added by SIG members. Knownet have adopted their blogging software for deployment on the site making it simple to add new content, to assign categories and to search for content. The site now also provides a number of RSS and Atom feeds to allow you to easily track new content on the site.

Check out the site redesign. There is a special blog for comments, feature requests and ideas on further developing the site.

Have you visited the new SIGOSSEE / JOIN shared weblogs yet?

Site members can now participate in the activities of the site more easily with the new collaborative weblogs.

See the Community Activities area of the site:

http://www.ossite.org/collaborate