Open-Source in Education - Links and Resources

The Sakai consortium of US universities and the OKI and JASIG standards bodies have revealed more detailed plans for the open source, standard compliant Managed Learning Environment (MLE) that they are building. Most notable is a partner programme by which organisations other than the founding members can join in, and get support- for a fee.

Author Name: Wilbert Kraan

The CEN/ISSS Learning Technology Workshop was launched in February 1999. Its main objectives are:

Encouraging participation in global initiatives in order to ensure that diverse European requirements are properly addressed by those global initiatives.

Creating specifications, agreements, guidelines or recommendations where appropriate.

Providing a forum for the development and implementation of requirements-driven Learning Technologies.

Carefully examining and taking into account the various effects on learning and training technology standards which are due to the diversity of cultural backgrounds and languages that exists within Europe.

Publicizing the Learning Technologies Workshop's activities and results to Relevant European projects, Technology developers and end users.

Providing a forum for discussion for European project initiatives.

The aim of this active focus group is to track, evaluate and support the UK FE/HE sector's uptake and implementation of educational content interoperability standards. The SIG focuses primarily on the IMS Content Packaging, Simple Sequencing and Learning Design specifications, plus new IMS content-related developments. In addition the SIG monitors related specifications and standards produced by the following agencies: ADL (particularly the SCORM), IEEE, CEN/ISSS, BSI, ISO, AICC, ARIADNE and Prometeus.

The Educational Content SIG meets approximately every three or four months. Specific aspects of the relevant specifications are reviewed and tasks are actioned to implement and test particular features of the specifications. Where possible the activities of the SIG mirror the development schedule of the specifications.

The EC SIG is committed to a policy of open communication and wide scale dissemination. All the outputs of the SIG's activities, including evaluation reports and implementation guidelines, are made freely and widely available to all interested parties.

OSCOM is an international, not-for-profit organization dedicated to Open Source Content Management.

The goal is to bring together as many great brains as possible to build a network and grow the community of open source content management.

We want to show the world that there are already great and easy-to-use open source content management solutions out there.

Mailing list site on Open Source Software for education

Knowledge base for new technology and education

A weblog on scholarly online publishing, open access, and library related technology

Author Name: Henk Ellermann

Technological and socio-economic changes known as the "New Information Society/Economy" are re-introducing the notion of production, consumption and trade of goods and services without the direct or obvious involvement of money. Such "non-monetary/trans-monetary" economic activity is difficult to measure through usual monetary indicators. This project aims to remedy this situation by identifying and developing indicators of such activity through a case study of OS/FS: Open Source/Free Software.

The FSF Europe was launched on March 10th 2001 and supports all European aspects of Free Software; especially the GNU Project. We are actively supporting development of Free Software and furthering GNU-based Operating Systems such as GNU/Linux. Also, we provide an assistance centre for politicians, lawyers and journalists in order to secure the legal, political and social future of Free Software.

The FSF Europe was launched on March 10th 2001 and supports all European aspects of Free Software; especially the GNU Project. We are actively supporting development of Free Software and furthering GNU-based Operating Systems such as GNU/Linux. Also, we provide an assistance centre for politicians, lawyers and journalists in order to secure the legal, political and social future of Free Software.

OSS Watch provides the UK further and higher education community with neutral and authoritative guidance about free and open source software, and about related open standards.

News from the open access movement

Author Name: Peter Suber

News from the open access movement

Author Name: Peter Suber

Founded in 1995, Stephen's Web is best described as a digital research laboratory for innovation in the use of online media in education. More than just a site about online learning, it is intended to demonstrate new directions in the field for practitioners and enthusiasts.

Author Name: Stephen Downes

Open Education is a group of bloggers/thinkers/educators - passionate about the need to offer educators the option to share and make content available for others to use.