• Motivation
• Program
• Detailed agenda
• Links for Education
• Mailing list Education edu@lsm.abul.org

Keywords

• Education, school
• LAN and intranet at school
• Schools connection by the Internet
• Deployment, remote servicing
• Training

Motivation

Why give precedence to Free Software at school ?

• Whether they like it or not, teachers make their pupils' parents buy proprietary software if they use it at school. By so doing, they contribute to a money-based selection when free software used at school can be brought home !  Free software are "logiciels républicains" ("republican" software) :
  - "Liberté" : freedom to use, copy, modify, distribute, get access to code-source... ;
  - "Égalité" : equality between users, whatever school or family means may be : with free software, a small poorly-funded school has the same choice as a more affluent or prestigious one ;
  - "Fraternité" : fraternity, cooperation and mutual aid between developers and users, between users, between school and family.

• School has to stay away from consumerism. School needs, and the means they require, have to keep clear from fashion or software industry advertising. Free software gives increased perennity to hardware as it allows a longer use of old (and cheap) hardware, particularly as terminals or "client" computers. Free Software allows software perennity as there is no necessity to buy the last software releases to obtain an (eventual) improvement. Updates can be immediatly developed (so you don't depend on an editor goodwill) and shared with other users worldwide.
  Knowledge is universal, Free Software too.

• In Education, means are more limited than in other sectors, because they have to be employed on a large scale. It's more relevant to pay grey matter (e.g. help for projects conception, personal and educational training) or extra devices than to pay proprietary licences.

• Free software is particularly performing and secure for communication, a priority at school for Internet access and E-mail... Free Software allows remote servicing, a necessity for its development in great many schools. Free software is impervious to current viruses.

• When appropriate, it is necessary to give students real computing skills, not only proprietary software "directions for use". Consequently, they could get access without restrictions to code-source, modify or adapt it to their own needs, and thus improve the applications they use or develop.

• as a republican principle (Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité) ;
• as a pedagogical choice (open and available code-source) ;
• for installations and communications security ;
• for economic reasons (sustainability) ;
• for economical constraints (limited resources).

• Software development(GPL) for and by teachers, using free quick Gnome development tools such as Python + Glade + libglade + Emacs. A "live" development will be presented by Hilaire Fernandes 
• porting existing software ;
• software localization / translation  ;
• software development (GPL) for school library ;
• software development (GPL) for school administration and education management ;
• HOW-TO's for the recycling of donated or scrap hardware for educational ends(X-term...) ;
• development of web-interface(s) for users and groups management in a school heterogeneous LAN environment (cf PingOO, SLIS, SLAES, MINAL, Abulange...) ;
• EDUML and free standards for documents formats ;
• software tools for a development policy in the National Education systems (PingOO, SLIS, SLAES...).

The agenda will be the following :

1. First, thematic workshops for specialists and developers (see above "sub-topics").

2. Second, open days for all actors involved in education and training.
   Purpose : give out general information on GNU/Linux and Free "Libre" Software, and narrow on notions and terminology related to Open Source, GPL, etc. (working language : French)
   • Wednesday, 5th July in the afternoon 
     • presentations on free "libre" software and education connections ;
     • demonstration of available free software for school ;
   • Thirsday, 6th July 
     • demonstration of a GNU/Linux school LAN : Linux servor (+ Samba, Apache, etc.) and old hardware clients (Linux, DOS/Windows, Mac...) coming from firms or administrations ;
     • a round table on "Free software and Education in Aquitaine" to draw plans for future action.
   • Friday, 7th July 
     • practical workshops : produce documents, theory and pratics of Xterm... 
     • workshop "special mathematics" ;
     • workshop servers for communication, SLAES, PingOO.

   You can see detailed agenda.

Liens :

Mailing-list for topic "Free Software for Education" :

• To subscribe, send a mail to sympa@lsm.abul.org with "subscribe edu" in the message
• To post on the list, send your mail (usual work language : French) to edu@lsm.abul.org

Many thanks to Seznec's for translation and check