education
KWordQuiz: An amazingly useful flash card tool
- 2008-03-24
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Since I was home schooled, I never had homework (homework and classwork were one and the same). And since I never had homework, I… never really had to learn how to study until high school. But when I did learn how to study, I found flash cards to be extremely effective. So I fell in love with KWordQuiz, a KDE Education project for flash card lovers just like me.
- Andrew Min's posts
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A £99 GNU/Linux laptop: is it just too cheap?
- 2008-03-07
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On 28 February 2008, Elonex launched the Elonex ONE—the first sub-£100 laptop in the UK. Clearly competing against the much in-demand Asus EeePC [2], Elonex say they are aiming at the school-student market. The thing is, I just can’t stop asking: isn’t £99 too cheap for a laptop?
- Ryan Cartwright's posts
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No budget learning with free software
The Guus Kieft School
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This article describes the work in progress of applying Ubuntu Linux sensibly within an underfunded school, and as part of a wider well thought out and alternative educational structure. I shall emphasise best practices and try my best not to dwell too much on the underlying technologies.
The school
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Free as in free milk
Microsoft's business practices in developing countries
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A first draft of this article has been sitting for months in my hard disk. I decided to finish it after reading that Microsoft will offer its operating system and office suite for $3 per machine to developing countries. That made me think of the way the giant software company “helps” these countries by giving licenses of its proprietary software almost for free, and that in turn made me think of free milk. Let me tell you about it.
The Nestlé boycott
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Education, education, education
- 2007-05-13
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I heard a phrase today that reminded me of my childhood: “…learning and sharing together”. I’m not sure if I ever heard this exact phrase, but it was definitely a theme that was central to my early education; it’s now a central theme of my life again, this time through free software. This link between free software and education was first made by Richard Stallman in his essay Why Schools Should Use Exclusively Free Software, and this link is now being reinforced by the work that’s going on with the One Laptop Per Child initiative.
- Jonathan Roberts's posts
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Is better education the key to finding better software?
- 2007-03-03
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I read David Jonathon’s article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads, Shareware Download, and Forte Downloads don’t advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available… if you know where to look.
- Edward Russel's posts
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A killer idea for code
- 2007-02-07
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You know what I’d like to see? I’d like the various Free software groups (whether they use “open source” or “free software” doesn’t matter) get together to produce the greatest educational tool the world has ever seen:
A website dedicated to Free / Open Source code. Not programs. Code.
- Anthony Taylor's posts
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Linux software: the kid's plan for an icy day
- 2007-01-15
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Hi, it’s B and G, the little kids in this house. We’ve had a lot of ice lately. The TV says we may even lose the electricity. Dad said he needed to write his blog early this weekend. But right now, he is walking around the living room and griping about writer’s block. He looks kinda funny.
So we sneaked in here to say what we don’t like and do like about the computer. The adults have said what they liked, now it is the kid’s turn.
- Chris Mostek's posts
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Reclaiming ICT education - Why free software is a necessity in schools
- 2006-12-01
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My formal education in computing ended at the age of 14, about six weeks into a GCSE (The UK equivalent of the US’s High School Diploma) course in ICT. I’ve had a lifelong passion for computers, but despite this, I opted instead to study Design and Technology and never looked back.
- Tim Cowlishaw's posts
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Child's play
- 2006-11-30
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Is getting people to convert to GNU/Linux like feeding your kids veges? I’m used to the feeling of smug satisfaction when I’ve slipped a couple of extra vegetables in a meal and the children haven’t noticed.
Mmmm, this is delicious Mum. I love Spaghetti Bolognaise.
- Rachel Probert's posts
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Have we raised a generation of technology drones?
- 2006-11-27
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I received an interesting note today from the school my children attend. In order to save precious dollars, last school year, I suggested that they begin using OpenOffice and only install Microsoft Office where there are licenses. The note I received today listed computer needs, and one of the needs listed as “Because Open Office is a lesser program compared to the Microsoft office programs, it wouldbe helpful to have either tutorials or at least manuals for these programs.” Now, I agree that I should have provided books or pointed them to online manuals.
- Ken Leyba's posts
- 26 comments
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A free education: Open-Of-Course
- 2006-11-19
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Attempts to educate and evangelise to people about the benefits of free software are often frustrasted by the common perception that free software is made ‘by geeks, for geeks’ and is therefore of limited interest to a less ‘technical’ audience.
- Tim Cowlishaw's posts
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Didn’t God say “...and the geeks shall inherit the earth”?
- 2006-09-17
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Okay kids, gather ’round, I’m going to reminisce. When I was about six, I had what is classed as well developed literacy skills—I could write some words, I could read books about Jenny and Jack on the swing, that sort of thing. My parents bought a mac and we thought we were the height of sophistication. (That was in 1986, BTW.) But to me, it was like a magic box that was used on special occasions, and it was a grownup thing. I mean, I only used the phone on special occasions!
- Bridget Kulakauskas's posts
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Event review: Sakai day Europe
Back lit churches
- 2006-09-12
- Published on web | Easy
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Hello world, Sakai a well-known learning management system and framework for tool building has had its first European Congress in the beautiful town of Lübeck in Germany. A relatively small campus town Leubeck is well known for its churches and marzipan and related confectionary. I personally enjoyed looking at the two main churches back lit from outside in the dark with good beer and solid traditionally German food inside my nicely warmed stomach.
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Technology: a curse on the civilised world!
- 2006-09-03
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There are lots of things that worry tabloids, current affairs programs, and talkback radio shock jocks. Some of these things are immigration, neighbours from hell, love-rat rip-off merchants, termites, crash diets, dole-bludging playstation addicts, the utter degeneration of civilisation as we know it BEFORE OUR VERY EYES… the list goes on. But one of the perpetual flavours of the month for these harbingers of doom and global devastation is the future of our children.
- Bridget Kulakauskas's posts
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Passing notes in class
- 2006-09-02
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My children recently started school. I wanted a way for them to be ableto chat with their friends, get help with homework, and generally have funon the Internet without exposing them to the world at large. So, I did whatany extremely geeky dad would do: I built a secured instant messaging (IM)server for their school.
I could have set my children up with any number of accounts on thenormal, commercial services. However, I decided to create my own forseveral reasons.
- Kirk Strauser's posts
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Towards a universal online library of learning material
- 2006-08-27
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How much material has been lost through the years? Now the question is of course what do I mean by material. For example, do I mean the trivial stuff such as typed office memorandums or the less trivial—the missing live broadcasts of the early Dr Who. No, let me focus on what I consider to be the most important material of all, that which may have a positive effect on the next generation— the historical and educational material that helps our children form sophisticated models of the Universe around us.
- Alan Berg's posts
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User interfaces should teach, not hide
- 2006-08-09
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Today, I finally decided that my gVim editor needed a smaller font, and the process of getting it to work right has made me notice a fundamental flaw in the way we think about user interfaces. It’s not an innovation that you’ll get on the proprietary side of the line, because it’s an innovation required for the digital middle class of ‘user-developers’ that I mentioned last week.
Essentially it’s just this: GUIs should teach, not obfuscate or hide the underlying mechanism.
- Terry Hancock's posts
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I’ve been browsing: Sakai 2.2 released and new distros to try
- 2006-07-23
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Released Thursday was Sakai 2.2. With a growing community of Educational establishments using this product as their online presence or a significant part thereof; it is only a matter of time before Sakai breaks into the mainstream conscious. If you have a spare five minutes and a reasonably fast connection then I would say it is a fun product to try. The quick demo gives you an idea of the products potential. And it’s just a simple matter of unpacking and running a startup script.
- Alan Berg's posts
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A server for education
Wims is a “magic” server
- 2005-05-11
- Server side | Intermediate
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I recently encountered a group of very enthusiastic teachers, who wanted to convince me to try a new e-learning environment, with astonishing quizzes, and drills of extreme originality. However, as I’d last used computers in the seventies, I was initially sceptical. Back then computers had just been used to send humans to the Moon. It was hard for me to make the leap from those machines to the machines of today. And quizzes seemed to be a strange use of such a powerful resource.
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