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If you are in K-12 somewhere in the world and you are interested in Open Source in K-12 Education, you should come to K-12 Open Minds Conference that is going to be held in Michigan City on October 6th and 7th.

Big news is the conference is Open AND free, so there is no entry charge.

There is going to be a lot of various sessions regarding Leadership and Policy, Teaching and Learning, and on Technology and Infrastructure. There will also be some school visits where you will be able to see real classes using Open Source technologies in their daily lives.

We hope to see you there !

• The announcment
• The website (where you can register to come to the conference)

Next week is the NECC 2009 annual conference, that will be held in Washington, DC from June 28th to July 1st.

I'll be there all week long, giving two sessions, which are

• Great Open Source Programs You Can Start Using Right Away
• 10 Common Pitfalls on the Road to Open Source

Those sessions are going to be held in the Open Source Lab.

We are providing the infrastructure to run the lab, which will be an LTSP-Cluster installation (like the ones we do for school boards and school districts), with 60 Eee Box Mini Desktop, gladly provided by Asus, that will run as thin clients.

I'm looking forward to meet a lot of people there, and discuss with.

There will also be a lot of volunteers helping us in the lab and the Open Source Playground, that will be just in front of the lab itself. I know that folks from the Ubuntu DC Loco , OpenSuSE, Fedora are supposed to be there.

I think all this will be very fun.

I'll try to post here, and also on Laconica/Twitter.

I'm a happy participant of the large scale deployement session. This session is dedicated to create a "white book" to help organisation to deploy large scale projects.

First things first :

• What is large scale deployement ?

Numbers are not enough : for small organization a 10 computer deployment can be large scale. So it really depends on where you start from ! However some very interesting ideas came out :

• It has to have a strong impact on every user targeted by the new system or by the upgrade

Some characteristics now :

• Need at least a pilot project
• Take at least one year to completely deploy the project
• Need specific change management in order to assist users

What is a successfull project :

• 100% of the users are using the system (it can takes some times)
• The project empowers the users
• The project is repeatable, scalable, affordable and sustainable
• The project has a strong and positive impact on how things are done after the project has been rolled out

It has been a very interesting day and some very interesting discussions occurs.

More to come...

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