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[DS-discuss]SITEWATCH: [GNU]Linux in Education Report # 93


From: Frederick Noronha (FN)
Subject: [DS-discuss]SITEWATCH: [GNU]Linux in Education Report # 93
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 04:56:20 +0530 (IST)

---------- Forwarded message ----------

URL             :  http://www.seul.org/edu/report93.html

   [1]seul-edu Logo 

   Linux in education report #93

   April 7, 2003--[2]The Shuttleworth Foundation has opened its first
   three open source learning centers in South Africa. You can read more
   about it in [3]this SABC article.

   In a somewhat similar vein, the California Department of Corrections
   and the Technology Training Foundation of America are [4]offering
   California schools reconditioned computers with Mandrake Linux
   preinstalled. If you'd like to donate a system to this effort, please
   contact [5]TTFA

   MadPenguin announced that it's beginning development of [6]TykeLinux,
   a Linux distro geared toward child development and learning. They say,
   "While we are still in the planning stage, we are formally beginning
   our search for developers who wish to help us with this project. Any
   interested parties, please contact us at
   address@hidden"

   Suraj Kumar told us about address@hidden, an effort in the Indian
   state of Tamil Nadu to popularize free software to educational
   institutions (schools, colleges) in and around the state capital
   (Chennai). Kumar says:

     We are on the lookout for volunteers who can be of any help to the
     address@hidden effort. Currently we are in need of book writers for
     writing books for use with teaching at schools (typically age
     groups 6 - 15). We would be glad to join hands with enthusiasts out
     here and help spread free software.

   Although it's a bit outside of our normal area of interest (education
   below university level), the faculty senate of the State University of
   New York at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo) recently passed [9]a resolution
   calling for university support of open software and standards. This
   may be something to present to similar bodies at other educational
   institutions for their consideration!

   David Bucknell proposed the idea of forming [10]local Schoolforge
   groups. His reason for the proposal:

     Why form a Schoolforge group rather than a LUG?

     *

     If Linux or BSD or some other software is your only, or at least
     your primary interest, then join or form a [11]LUG (also:
     [12]http://lugww.counter.li.org/) or an application project. These
     are excellent purposes.
     *

     If educational software and-or content are so important to you that
     they actually equal or surpass software in importance, then form a
     Schoolforge group. Until now, education has come second; we would
     like to maintain the tie with expert computing developers, but put
     the goal of education first, not second.

   Chris Puttick alerted us to [13]NoMachine. Gian Filippo Pinzari, one
   of the developers of NoMachine, says of it:

     NX is a commercial product and some parts are closed source,
     nevertheless all the core technology on which NX is based is and
     will remain OpenSource. This includes very, very good compression
     of X protocol that is the result of 3 years of hard development (I
     know it was hard, as I'm one of those who did it ;-). Beside
     software developed by NoMachine to handle X sessions, we integrated
     in the same infrastructure seamlessaccess to RDP and RFB sessions
     through integration with RDesktop and and VNC projects.

     [...]

     A last word about NX commercial software. As we said, all the core
     components (and especially the X related components) are OSS and
     released as GPL. This means that everything the NX client and
     server do, can be done by hand by a normal user having an account
     on the remote server. We aim at the lazy users :-). NoMachine
     intends to provide the higher level software and the administrative
     tools that make possible to run thousands of users' sessions. We
     aim at the same customers of Citrix MetaFrame and SCO Tarantella.
     In the future, we envision a world where any application is
     available to any device, from anywhere in the world. To make this
     possible we needed efficient transport and compression of X-Window.
     Now it is there and everybody can use it.

     It's our interest to make our technology widespread. We would be
     glad to see an OpenSource version of NX client and NX server
     software and would be happy to see our OSS code in LTSP, GNOME and
     KDE projects. We'll provide all the help to make this possible. At
     the same time we think that a 100% OSS business model is not
     affordable for our company. We would like to contribute to build a
     free battleground where OSS and commercial software can cooperate
     (but even fairly compete) to make OSS technology win against
     proprietary solutions.

   Some new applications came to our notice since the last report. Here
   are three new educational applications we've recently found:

   ConvertAll
          ConvertAll is a unit conversion program in which units can be
          combined with multiplication and division operators and can be
          squared, cubed, etc. The interface is graphical, allowing the
          units to be selected from lists and the conversions to be made
          in both directions. Non-linear units (such as temperatures and
          gauge sizes) are supported. The unit data file can be easily
          modified to add additional units. ConvertAll is based on the
          PyQt library. (License: GNU Public License)
          [14]http://www.bellz.org/convertall/

   Historical Event Markup and Linking Project (Heml)
          The Heml webapp transforms XML documents into historical
          timelines, maps and animated maps, all hyperlinked to source
          documents. The webapp also serves an XML schema defining the
          Heml markup language, provides many example documents and
          includes project documentation. (Please note I have entered
          this project under 'Geography' category because no more
          suitable options was available.) (License: GNU Public License)
          [15]http://heml.mta.ca

   morsetrainer
          Morsetrainer is a program for learning Morse code. It shows you
          a Morse coded letter and requires you to type the corresponding
          decoded letter. The codes of incorrect answers will be asked
          more frequently and vice versa. Display frequencies are saved
          so that you will keep learning the codes you need when you
          start your next session. (License: GNU Public License)
          [16]http://rainbow.bksys.at/bernhard/morsetrainer.html

                                [17]Previous

   Current Report is [18]Report 93

   [19]Next

      Please report any technical problems to address@hidden

References

   1. http://www.seul.org/edu
   2. http://www.tsf.org.za/
   3. http://www.sabcnews.com/sci_tech/computers/0,1009,55689,00.html
   4. http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT3482499605
   5. http://www.computers2learnby.org/
   6. http://www.madpenguin.org/article.php?sid=128&mode=thread&order=0
   7. mailto:address@hidden
   8. http://symonds.net/~suraj/demo-schools/about.html
   9. http://orange.math.buffalo.edu/csc/resolution2_april2003_approved.html
  10. http://opensourceschools.org/staticpages/index.php?page=20030303060148945
  11. http://www.linux.org/groups/
  12. http://lugww.counter.li.org/
  13. http://www.nomachine.com/
  14. http://www.bellz.org/convertall/
  15. http://heml.mta.ca/
  16. http://rainbow.bksys.at/bernhard/morsetrainer.html
  17. http://www.seul.org/edu/report92.html/
  18. http://www.seul.org/edu/report93.html/
  19. http://www.seul.org/edu/report94.html/
  20. mailto:address@hidden

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