neta - Resources

Open Technology Resources

http://k-12.pisd.edu/open/

Articles and background information:

Open Up Your Software Options presentation (TIES 2008)
Open Technologies workshop handout (updated 12/2008)
- Workshop files (.zip format)

CoSN's Open Technologies website

CoSN Primer on Open Technologies in K-12 Education

The Cape Town Open Education Declaration
Penguin Day (for non-profit organizations to explore the use of open technologies)

Open source conferences
- O'Reilly sponsored conferences
- The Center of Open Source & Government conferences

The Open Source Initiative
Sites providing best practices in actual use:
- Seacoast Professional Development Center

Formatting for the Future (Government Technology)

Open Standards, Open Source and Open Innovation (Committee for Economic Development)

Open source quality and security (Coverity)

Making Decisions About Open Source Software for K-12
What is Open Source by Dan Woods

Why Open Source Software? Look at the Numbers!
Open Source Paradigm Shift by Tim O'Reilly
Google supports open source initiatives

Open Source Support Models

Open Options - Open Source Considerations
CIO Insight survey on open source adoption
K12OpenSource - a wiki devoted to Free (Libre) Open Source Software

K12EdCom - Educational Commons for OpenCourseWare
The world's largest market turn to free software - China's bet on Linux
Open Source versus proprietary software - the debate is over
Open Source Academy in the U.K.
Open source insurance policies (to protect against non-compliance license issues)
Microsoft "opens" its Office file formats
Open Source Software Lab @ Microsoft

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Licensing:
- The Open Source Definition
- Center for Social Justice Fair Use and Copyright resources
- Creative Commons licensing (flexible copyright for our digital age)
  - Is creativity being strangled by the law? (Lawrence Lessig talk)
  - An easy-to-understand conversation on Creative Commons
  - 25+ sources for Creative Commons content
  - Cory Doctorow - author using Creative Commons licensing
  - The Pompous Octopus online comic using Creative Commons Licensing
  - Web template offered under Creative Commons licensing
  - 7 Things You Should Know About Creative Commons (EDUCAUSE article)
  - Creative Commons Find page (Google enabled)
  - Yahoo's Creative Commons search engine
  - The history of Creative Commons
  - The Remix Culture (Reticulum Rex)
- GNU General Public License
  - First draft of version 3
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Operating systems:
- Linux news - updated daily
- OpenLab - EduKar .::. educational software and content solution for Linux
- Ubuntu Linux ("humanity to others")
  - Edubuntu - customized school environment
  - Who is using Ubuntu?
  - Xubuntu for the Asus Eee PC
- Novell Linux
  - OpenSUSE - live DVD
  - Linux curriculum for K-12 schools
  - Novell and Microsoft announce partnership to support SUSE Linux
- Redhat Linux
- OpenBSD (Berkley Software Distribution UNIX)
- FreeBSD (Berkley Software Distribution UNIX)
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Applications:
- OpenDisc - open source software for Windows
- Macintosh OS X open source software library
- Open source software directory - very comprehensive
- Top 100 of the best open source software applications
- FOSSWIN - a collection of over 100 free and open source software applications
- SourceForge.net (open source repository)
- SchoolForge.net - education specific
- Open source applications (Windows) on DVD (Australia)
- Open source applications (Mac OS X)
- Open source web applications (BitNami)
- African Schoolnet Toolkit (open source)
- Sun releases Java as an open source project
- Portable applications - have the most popular open source applications available for use from a flash drive or CD without installing them (Windows only)
- OS X Portable Applications (Macintosh)
- **OpenOffice**
  - Documentation
  - Tutorials
  - Samples and templates
  - Label templates (Worldlabel.Com)
  - Comparison of OpenOffice Impress and Microsoft PowerPoint
  - French tax agency opts for OpenOffice
- Lotus Symphony - IBM release based on OpenOffice
- Macintosh OS X users - unless you have X.11 windowing installed, you might want to try NeoOffice for the time being.
- Moodle - online course management system
  - Article on Moodle in the December/January issue of Innovate
- The **GIMP**
  - Tutorials
  - Tutorials for photographers
- Paint.net
- **Tuxpaint**
  - Student Gallery
- GCompris (educational activities for young children)
- KompoZer - web authoring system
- **Nvu** - web authoring system (development ended in 2005)
  - Tutorials
- **Firefox** - web browser
  - Tutorials
  - Toolbar tutorial
  - For the serious researcher - Zotero research tool extension
  - The Semantic Web concept (Firefox extension)
  - Firefox Add-ons
  - 10 essential extensions (Information Week)
- **CamStudio** - video recording of dekstop applications for training
- Flock - the social web browser
- eLGG - open source social networking plaform
- IHMC Cmap Tools
- Audacity - audio editing and recording tool
- VLC Media Player - cross platform media player for most formats
- **Prism** - video conversion software
- Miro - open source Internet TV
- New Breed Software
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- Open Use Web 2.0 applications:
  - Web 2.0.... the Machine is Us/ing Us (YouTube video)
  - GoToWeb2.0 - the complete Web 2.0 directory
  - 50 ways to tell a story using Web 2.0 tools (CogDogRoo)
  - Zoho Virtual Office (word processing, spreadsheets, presentation and more)
    - Google versus Zoho (a comparison with proprietary office suites)
  - gOffice (word processing, desktop publishing, spreadsheets and presentation)
  - Google for Educators
    - Docs & Spreadsheets
  - Thinkfree online office
  - AJAX Office (Asynchronous Javascript and XML)
  - Online word processing - Writely
  - Online spreadsheet - Num Sum
  - Screencast-o-matic - video recording of desktop applications for training
  - Wetpaint - wikis made simple
  - The Programmable Web
    - AP News and Google Maps
    - Google Lt Trips
    - WikiMapia
    - Newzingo
    - Mibazaar
    - News Map
    - Weather Bonk (The Weather Channel and Google Maps)
    - Flickr Sodoku
    - Ask Vox (Know It All)
    - Amazon Prime search engine
  - Web 2.0 - Ingredients for a Site Makeover (Information Week article)
  - Web 3.0 - the "common sense" web (New York Times article)
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Content:
- The discussion around open source from Technology Review (June 2005)
  - The People Own Ideas (Lawrence Lessig)
  - The Creators Own Ideas (Richard Epstein)
- Teen Content Creators and Consumers (Pew Internet & American Life report)
- State of the Blogosphere (Technorati)
- 12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Should Know (Information Week)
- "Texting" teenagers are proving more literate (UK study)
- Convergence of Open Source and Open Content (First Monday article)
- Flexbooks - supported by the CK-12 Foundation as a collaborative textbook alternative
- Wide Open - open source methods and their future potential
- Curriki - open source curriculum
- OER Commons - Open Education Resources
- Wikimedia Foundation - source of eight great open content resources
  - Wikipedia tightens rules for posting
  - Wikipedia to Print (CNN article)
    - "Can You Trust Wikipedia?" (experts review Wikipedia enteries in their areas of expertise)
    - And Wikipedia responds!
    - Science journal finds Wikipedia pretty accurate
    - Wikipedia - a "work in progress"
  - Wikibooks takes on textbook publishers (C-NET article)
  - Wikibooks offers free e-texts for education (eSchool News article)
  - Citizendium - The Citizens' Compendium
- Encyclopedia of Life - wiki-style environment produced by scientific experts around the world
- Digital Univerise - an alternative to Wikipedia?
- The Meaning of Everything - the story of the Oxford English dictionary (notice the parallels with todays' Wikipedia before you dismiss these efforts as not being "academic" enough)
- Open Education Community Resources (supported by the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation)
- Free Me DVD - raise awareness of free culture
- The Open Video Project - a shared digital video collection
- New York Public Library's Digital Gallery
- Project Gutenberg - eBooks
  - Triplanetary - just released as a great online HTML book
- MIT OpenCourseWare
- Internet Archive - Universal access to human knowledge
- Open content music example (Tryad :: Public Domain)
- Opsound - open source music
- RSSRecords - creative commons licensed audio
- Pandora - open music radio
- Last.fm - open music radio
- OurMedia web storage site
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Open Standards:
- Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)
  - OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications
- CoSN position statement regarding interoperability standards
- Promoting interoperability through open standards (Microsoft)
- IBM gives official support to the OpenDocument standard
- Massachusetts supports OASIS OpenDocument format
- Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM)
  - eSchool News article (April 10, 2006)
- Global Learning Consortium (IMS)
- Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF)
- Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)
- Extensible Markup Language (XML)
- Service Modeling Language (SML)
- Ajax programming (Asynchronous Javascript and XML)
  - Google AJAX Search Wizards
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Hardware devices running open source:
- OLPC XO and Asus Eee PC comparison
  - Asus Eee PC
    - Xubuntu for the Asus Eee PC
  - OLPC XO
- Dell Inspiron Mini 9
- M&A Companion PC (Intel)
- myPad from M&A Technology
- iPod Linux Project
- Nokia N800, and Nokia N810 Internet Tablets
  - Washington Post review (makes the case that it is not a laptop replacement - which it was never designed to be)
- TuxPhone - an open source hardware/software project cell phone
- iLiad - a portable reading device using Linux and electronic paper display from iRex
- IBM Linux watch
- Linux devices
- All Linux devices
Please email Jim Hirsch (jhirsch@pisd.edu) if you have questions or suggestions for additional links.