I started down the OSS road today. I've got 5 edubuntu cd's on the way, I took one (of 3) of my classroom laptops and got rid of IE in favor of Firefox, installed OpenOffice (but can't seem to get rid of MS Office...), found two opensource software programs to use with my students on an upcoming project- it feels pretty good. Any advice for an OSS newbie?

You're doing just what I would advise you to do: start with the browser (Firefox), then Offce (OpenOffice), maybe GIMP (image editing). Begin with applications and help your students learn to use them. You'll establish credibility and build support. I am not as familiar with Edbubtu as I am with the standard Ubuntu distribution, but I know it is really coming along. (I am on Ubuntu, using FIrfox now.)

One more thing. You shouldn't throw out programs just for philosphical reasons, ie. not Open Source. If what you need to do can only be done well with Microsoft, use it.

Hi Tom, welcome from Germany/Bavaria. Check out one of my blogs http://e-competences.blogspot.com
Best regards
Hans

Hi Tom, thanks for the update. Look forward to meeting your friend here in Doha.

So happy to hear it, Tom! We've had a great reception and after I taught a summer course based on the book I had the proof of concept I needed. I also learned chapter 4 and 9 will get a working over for 2nd edition! Any chance you are going to Educon in Philly late January?

Tom,

Thanks for your post regarding my "peace" question. Something I"m trying to engage teachers in these days since I come into contact with many fine educators the world over...

I see you are friends with Lorraine! Her Circle Song project has been an inspiration.

Greetings from Korea,

David

hello Tom

Paul Lawrence Vann is a professional speaker, author, and radio host. He delivers stellar speeches to corporations, associations and at colleges throughout the U.S. and Canada. Learn more about Paul at http://www.paullawrencevann.com - http://www.blogtalkradio.com/paullawrencevann

thought may be on interest

Jim

Hi Tom,

I'm sending out messages to everyone I know right now, and this classroom20 network is no exception. (I've also sent this out on other Ning networks you may be a part of.) My name is Marco Morales; I am a 20 year old college student from Olin College of Engineering. I am a part of a group of 6 Olin College students (we're in Needham,MA, and engineering students) who has taken a year off to work on an education related project. I found you when I searched for middle schools on classroom20, and since our project is specific to middle schools, I thought you might be interested! Our project is called AlightLearning, and this is our "short" project description:

Under the assumption that within ten years, the landscape of modern education will have fully integrated what we now define as new classroom media: video, online collaboration, open source curriculum and other web tools, we hope to pioneer a web software tool that acts as a platform for this new media, bringing the power of the web and its tools to students, teachers and parents in a secure, comfortable and innovative environment. Our goal is to have our free software at a pilot middle school by April 15th, 2008, continuing to develop and coordinate with our users to create a product that other schools want to pilot and use at their schools, while allowing individual teachers to implement this tool in their own classroom.

Our project, titled Alight Learning, is currently trying to win an idea competition on Ideablob.com You can find us at http://ideablob.com/3975. We would love your support in the form of a vote within the next couple days, but more importantly we'd love your feedback and comments. Our description on Ideablob is short, and even the one above hardly gets many of the issues we would like to take a stab at solving, but at least it's a start.

Feel free to email me back, check out alightlearning.com, anything you like!

Thanks,

Marco Morales
marcotuts@gmail.com

Hi Tom. I was wondering if you have students or educator friends who would be interested in participating in a nationwide SAT Vocab Video Contest @ MIT university. You can view contest details at BrainyFlix.com Please let me know. Thanks!