Open Source is alive and well in Alaska

These past few days I was at http://www.aste.org/ . I setup a Linux lab
similar to the one I had at the IT Expo back in October.

There were some great ideas and examples of how technology can be used
in education. However, it has been my experience that most educators
don't do anything exciting. Even after listening to presenters talk
about exiting things one can do in education they don't do anything
exciting.

What was encouraging were the number of people that had not only herd of
open source software but were actually using it. The interesting thing
is that most of these open source applications are web based.

   1. http://moodle.org/
         1. Lots of people were using this
         2. There is a moodle boot camp in the sumer. I'll find out who
            does it and when.
   2. http://wordpress.org/ - there was a presentation on this
   3. Other on line tools for organizing data/information

I also learned about a few open source tools I didn't know about.

   1. http://openkiosk.sourceforge.net/
   2. http://www.vtiger.com/
   3. http://typo3.com/

I plan on installing vtiger. I'm not sure if I will use it but I would
like to play with it.

There was one teacher that walked by our booth and in an off hand
comment said she had recently moved to Alaska and didn't understand why
the school district she was working for didn't have Linux. The school
she came from had a Linux lab.

Open source is taking over the world. If you are not part of it now you
will get left behind. I'm not saying this to make fun of those not using
open source software. I'm saying this as a warning. If you don't know
about open source you will get left behind.

Be safe, secure and productive. Get open source software.

Oh, I had about 10 people show up for my presentation. I talked about
building stable networks with open source software.
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Received on Thu Mar 1 14:15:36 2007