K12 Open Minds Conference 2008 in Indianapolis in September

Benoit St-Andre — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:32:00 -0400

As you may know, I attended last year at K12 Open Minds Conference that was held in Indianapolis. I was one of the many international guests, with various people from Norway, France, Germany and Spain.

This year, I've been invited to work on the planning committee, and I can assure you we are going to have a wonderful conference. We will have different tracks, mainly teaching, leadership and technical tracks. Lots of interesting people to meet, and the targeted audience is large, from tech people to teachers.

Here is the official invitation. Hope to see you there !

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Dear Colleague:

Schools around the United States and the world are discovering the benefits of Open-Source Software. In Indiana alone, over 150,000 students use Open-Source Software every day. Not only does Open-Source Software save money, it allows schools to extend essential educational software to students’ home and into after-school programs, providing extended learning opportunities at no cost.

Are you looking for ways to provide more technology with less money?
Could your teachers benefit from a Virtual Learning Environment (Moodle)?
Do you want an solution for all of your students to access their school work from home?
Is your school community looking for ways to increase student engagement and learning?

Have you thought about developing a transition program to Open-Source Software?

Join us September 25-27, 2008 in Indianapolis, Indiana for the K-12 Open Minds Conference! This is an unparalleled opportunity to talk with teachers, administrators and technology staff from around the U.S. and the world. We expect more than 600 attendees, from the US, Europe, Asia and North and South America. Dozens of sessions that address teaching and learning, leadership and technical issues related to open technologies make this conference a “must attend” event.

Teaching and Learning sessions will feature experienced teachers from around the country demonstrating successful strategies and techniques. Technology and Infrastructure sessions will feature experts from around the world on issues such as: connecting to your local Windows or Mac authentication server, managing large and small network deployments, and using Interactive whiteboards in classrooms in Linux and open-source environments, and more! Additional sessions designed for Leadership and Policy will demonstrate how policy initiatives and effective strategies for using Open Source Software help to meet your educational objectives.

Keynote Speakers include:
Donna Benjamin – Executive Director of Creative Contingencies and board member of Open Source Industry Australia;

Alex Inman -- Director of Technology at Whitfield School, St. Louis, MO - an Essential School using open source;

Chris Lehman -- Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA, and;

Dr. David Thornburg – Director of Global Operations for the Thornburg Center and author of several books including, When the Best is Free.

Be sure to register soon at http://k12openminds.org !

A special conference hotel rate of $97 is available at the Indianapolis Downtown Marriott through Monday, August 25, 2008. After that, rates will be higher.

For more information and to register go to: http://k12openminds.org

Top 10 Free and Open Source Software (in education)

Benoit St-Andre — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:16:00 -0400

Open Source is gaining a much and much broader audience as time goes by. A lot of people admit that Open Source is ready for the server side.

But when it comes to Desktop, people often don't know where to look. They know what they want to do (based on the software they're using now), but they don't know where to look for alternatives. We Open-Source-enthusiasts often send them to huge lists, with 3-pages-per-software description. I tried to look for simple one-pager descriptions, but didn't find any. Those small documents are often about one particular software, so it was not what I was looking for. I wanted something to hand out to people, so that they could say to themselves : "OK, there are some good Open Source software, I have their names, and I know what it does".

So I just did a one-pager, with what is generally considered as "Top 10" Free and Open Source software for Education. I focused on the Desktop usage for now. I know there are much more educational software out there, but I think that will fit on another Top 10 document, focused on educational software.

You can find this document on our website, in PDF format. I'm putting the direct link here, and a small thumbnail of what it looks like. If you click on the thumbnail, you will get the PDF printable file. Just click on the previous link to get the Web page with links to these software and to the orginial OpenOffice file.

Feel free to comment here.

Revolution Linux's Blog - Education

K12 Open Minds Conference 2008 in Indianapolis in September

Top 10 Free and Open Source Software (in education)