Comments on: Open Source Schools curriculum meeting

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:55:00 +0000

I love Camstudio. I use it often,m including in workshops with non-techie folks, and they pick it up easily and see many applications.

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:54:00 +0000

Great post! Thanks for sharing. I’m encouraged by your focus on curriculum, a focus that is strangely missing in many open source in schools discussions I’ve been a part of.

I have been thinking a lot of how to get more open content adopted and used (http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/159) and have concluded that school leadership (administration, curriculum and instruction) needs to be more involved. If ed tech folks are the only ones leading the charge, it’s not going to go far.

On your competition idea, one thought I’ve been having is about having community service learning projects around developing and refining open educational resources. This could work for educators as well as students. Write a Wikipedia article. Contribute a definition to an open dictionary. Open license a photo or clip art. This could be a nice way to get more folks involved in this movement.

Thanks again for writing about this.

By: Open Policy Forum | Educationload.com

Open Policy Forum | Educationload.com — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:37:24 +0000

[...] Open Source Schools curriculum meeting (dougbelshaw.com) [...]

By: eyebeams

eyebeams — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:08:00 +0000

Keep your eyes on http://www.theora.org/news/ which has recently been given a big injection by Mozilla turning its attention to this open video standards. This will underpin a lot of video in browsers circumnavigating problems that prevent screen capture and many other open video standards at the moment. Open Source annotated video with video within video and audio is on its way – probably won’t happen until the fourth quarter of 09 but Mozilla’s support goes a long way. Theora was the programme controller on Max Headroom ;)

By: Miles Berry

Miles Berry — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:53:00 +0000

Thanks for your input yesterday and for posting these notes.

vnc2swf is quite a venerable, cross platform GPL screen recorder, although it’s not straightforward, particularly if you’re after live audio. CamStudio looks more interesting, although I’ve not tried it myself. Under linux there’s istanbul, although this produces ogg theora video, which could then be converted to .swf I guess.

There’s a thread over on edugeek at http://www.edugeek.net/forums/educational-software/30966-open-source-schools-getting-technical-staff-board.html, taking our meeting as a starting point, which is also worth a read.

By: Doug Belshaw

Doug Belshaw — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:47:00 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Mark. We have a specific remit and focus with Open Source Schools. I absolutely agree with your remarks about using the ‘right tool for the job’. The problem is that OSS doesn’t get much publicity in education because there’s no central budget!

It’s a bit like the situation in South America with breastmilk vs. formula. Mothers were buying formula milk, even though breastmilk is free and better for everyone. There was just no-one promoting it… ;-)

By: Mark Berthelemy

Mark Berthelemy — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:52:00 +0000

Hi Doug,

I get a little concerned when good stuff (eg. OpenDNS) is discounted simply because it doesn’t fit into the Open Source ideology. I agree wholeheartedly with the concepts and ideals of open-source software. But that doesn’t mean closed-source software is bad.

Shouldn’t we be taking a more pragmatic view, and finding the best tools for the job – regardless of their provenance?

BTW. I think you’ll find that Wink is closed-source too… There isn’t a good open-source alternative as far as I know.