OSsite SIG Open-Source Software for Education in Europe

Skip to content.

SIGOSSEE / JOIN

Sections
Personal tools
active users

KN Fast Folders
SIGOSSEE Photos
More...
Links to this content
1 other sites, weblog entries or discussions 'trackback' to this content:

 

SIGOSSEE / JOIN - Open Source for Education in Europe

This is the Open Source Software in Education website, developed by the EC sponsored SIGOSSEE and JOIN projects. The projects aim to provide information, advice, guidance and research on the use of open source software in education for the education community, for policy makers and planners and for educational software developers.

SIGOSSEE Project is now completed:
The SIGOSSEE Project drew to a close in late 2006, but this site will be improved and maintained as a community resource for those interested in open source and education in europe. In early February 2007, we will be re-vamping the site to foreground our resource-base with social-bookmarking and social-search tools and a collection of relevant RSS feeds and sources.
What are SIGOSSEE and JOIN?

SIGOSSEE supports a Special Interest Group on open source software in education, and provides access to publications, discussions and collaborative activities.

The objectives of the JOIN Project include the exploitation of synergies, the sharing of resource and the addressing of common issues within the open source Learning Management System (OS-LMS user community.

Our conference, "Open Source for Education in Europe" was held in Heerlen, NL on November 14-15 2005, co-sponspored by SIGOSSEE, JOIN and the Open University of the Netherlands. Many thanks to all who made the conference such a success. Stephen Downes has posted a brief round-up, including his audio and slides and links to other blogging from the conference. Some photos have started to appear in the SIGOSSEE / JOIN group photo pool on Flickr - Stuart Yeats has posted his photos for the group pool; if you have a Flickr account please tag your conference photos 'heerlen2005' and/or request to join the group pool.

The full programme for the conference is available for download as a pdf file.

The SIGOSSEE and JOIN projects are co-funded by the European Union in the programme 'Preparatory and innovative actions - eLearning Initiative'. The two projects decided to combine resources and activities after a concertation meeting among the projects funded in that strand.

Open Source and Open Standards for Education

We believe that Open-Source software can make a vital contribution to the improvement of technologies to support learning and knowledge-development. That open-source software is generally free of cost is important to many organisations, especially small ones, but the key advantage of open-source software for education is its open-ness.

Open-Source software can be freely adapted by any organisation or individual to explore a new idea about learning or technology, or to change the behaviours of software to address their own learners' particular needs. When combined with open software standards, open-source becomes even more powerful. Open Standards allow progress towards interoperability among different systems, and towards the development of component-based solutions instead of monolithic one-vendor systems.

Together, open-source and open-standards could emerge as the basis not only of more robust and usable systems, but of exciting new kinds of software to support collaborative learning. We hope that this site becomes a useful focus for information and discussions about open-source and open standards movements to improve technologies for learning and collaboration.

What can I find here?

NOTE: We are re-designing this site in February 2007 to foreground our collections of resources, feeds and tools for tracking issues related to open source software and education in europe. We will continue to host the old weblogs and content. Contact mike @ theknownet dot com if you have any requests for content or want to take over editorial responsibilities fort any of the weblogs.

The OSSITE Community Activities area is the main place to go to see what our members are posting, developing and discussing, and for news about ongoing activities. There are a number of shared weblogs in that area in which site members can post and discuss freely. The SIG Partners area describes the partners in SIGOSSEE, and provides am area in which each partner can develop their own special content as the project progresses.

In the SIG Working Groups area, you will find updates, activities, resources and documentation from the SIGOSSEE Working Groups. The working groups will be producing the main outcomes of the project: the Report on Standards and Architectures for OSS, User requirements and usability issues, Social, cultural and legal issues, Organisation and management issues and Report on take-up of OSS. These areas are currently rather inactive, but will begin to liven up soon!

Go to the Join Project area for information and activities specific to the JOIN project. The About SIGOSSEE area gives some more documentation about the SIGOSSEE project.

You can quickly browse through an outline of the site by using the 'View in fast folders' tool (see the list of tools at the left of the page). If you have javascript enabled, you can click on the folder-icons in fast_folders view to dynamically expand and collapse outline-views of the content structure.

What can I do here?

If you are interested in participating in discussion and debate about online and other technologies for learning and collaborative work - especially about open-source and open-standards for moving forward towards better solutions - please join the site and participate in discussions at the OSSITE Community Activities area. The following shared weblogs are currently open for all site members to post to:

Feedback?

Please let us know if you would like to know more, or if you have encountered any problems with this site.

 

Powered by Plone

This site conforms to the following standards: