Bremen Press Release
08-April-2004
permalink email thisWhilst this may not have caused much local attention, it did get picked
up by a number of the German language on-line news services. The result
has been a flood of enquiries from the German speaking world, both from
individuals wanting to join the Open Source Special Interest Group
(SIG) and from newspapers and other media representatives wanting
themselves to run features on education Open Source Software. Joachim
Dittrich, who leads the project for Bremen, has been kept busy over the
last month, responding to requests for interviews.
This does suggest that there is phenomenal interest in Open Source and
also a shortage of information. It also shows the potential for
the SIGOSSEE and the associated JOIN project. However, it also shows
that the projects will have to stay clearly focused, given the present
limitations on resources.
A (loose) English language translation of the press release is provided below for other who may wish to adapt it for local use.
Open Source goes Education
Open Source Software poses growing competition for the big software
companies. Linux, for example, is taking a big market share from
Microsoft in server applications and is even overtaking them in public
administration, at least in Germany. There are similar
developments in other areas with the growth of the information
society including the use open source for e-learning for the education
and training market.
At the Institute Technology and Education at the University of Bremen, Germany, experts
in information technology and education and training, practitioners and
scientist from nine European countries met in order to discuss the pros
and cons of software with freely available source code for education
and training applications.
At the start-up workshop of the EU-financed project "Special Interest
Group on Open Source Software in Education in Europe“ (SIGOSSEE), first
steps were taken to build an Special Interest Group (SIG) to
investigate and support the use of open source software in education.
The SIG group is open to anyone interested throughout the world.
Members of three other associated projects from Germany, Estonia and
Austria also attended the meeting.
The projects aims to provide impartial and comprehensive information on
open source software for education, and is looking at key issues
including standards and software architectures, user needs and
usability, social, cultural and legal issues and organisation and
sustainability.
To join the SIG and participate in discussions go to www.ossite.org . The findings will be published on the web site.
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