Apr

25

Sugar on a stick

Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Sugar, the operating system and GUI for OLPC’s truly innovative XO-1 laptops is now available, in beta at least, as a bootable USB stick, allowing any netbook, laptop or desktop to run this amazing re-interpretation of educational computing.

Sugar is built on the idea of activities rather than programs, with an interface designed to be ‘discoverable’, ie one which children can learn through play and experimentation. Sugar also affords a social experience of computing, as activities are sharable with other students using the same mesh server, thus allowing collaborative text editing, browsing, graphics and indeed programming. Read more

Apr

12

Ofsted and Open Source

Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Written for Open Source Schools

Ofsted’s report on The Importance of ICT was published over a month ago, and was met with perhaps a degree of surprise at some of its criticisms about aspects of ICT provision in schools, most notably for higher attaining and older pupils. There’s much in the report to strengthen the case for greater use, and indeed development, of open source software in schools. Read more

Apr

10

Why schools should use open source software

Filed Under Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Originally published on BBC Open Lab.

Awareness of open source software amongst teachers, technical staff and students is certainly far greater now than even a few years ago, thanks to projects like Moodle, Firefox and Audacity leading their respective fields. For schools, the appeal of open source is that it’s free. But ‘free’ is about freedom at least as much as it’s about price: Liberté rather than gratuite as the French would have it. The free software movement have identified the four freedoms underpinning open source software, and these offer compelling reasons for educators to look seriously at this software. Read more