Friday, July 28, 2006

The K12 Open Source Interview Series Has Begun!

Last night Miguel Guhlin and I interviewed Dr. David Thornburg on the use of Free and Open Source Software in schools. This was the first of a series of webcast interviews we will be conducting on this topic, to be broadcast live each Thursday night at 5:00pm Pacific Time and then made available in recorded form.

Next week, tune in for our interview with Jim McQuillan, the co-founder and project lead of the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP), and Daniel Howard, who has been instrumental in working with the Atlanta Public Schools on a broad deployment plan for Linux thin client. You can leave questions for them in advance at http://www.k12opensource.com/interviews, where you can also find instructions on joining the webcast.

To hear or download our interview with Dr. Thornburg, visit http://educationbridges.net/k12opensource, which also has the RSS feeds for the interview series. (Many thanks to Dave Cormier, Jeff Lebow, and Worldbridges for all the support!)

Friday, July 21, 2006

David Thornburg Live on the Web Thursday Evening

This Thursday evening, July 27th, at 5:00pm PDT (8:00pm EDT), Miguel Guhlin and I will be inaugurating our new weekly series of webcasts on Open Source Software in K-12 schools. Our guest on our first show will be David Thornburg, who has just published a new book entitled "When the Best Is Free: an educator's perspective on open source software." Dr. Thornburg is an extremely popular speaker, and drew a standing-room-only crowd at our NECC Open Source Pavilion when he spoke.

Information on this webcast, and future ones, is available on the www.k12opensource.com wiki in the "Interviews" section. Our goal is to collect a series of recorded audio interviews that will give new users of Open Source software a quick introduction to the technologies that interest them. Please request or recommend future speakers or topics in the "suggestions" part of that section, which can also be located by clicking here:

http://k12opensource.wikispaces.com/Interviews

The webcast interview with Dr. Thornburg will be 55 minutes long, of which the last 15 minutes will be open for question and answer. To listen to the webcast real-time, or to participate in the Q & A portion, you will need to download and configure Skype (http://www.skype.com), and then click on the Skypecast link when you are ready to join in:

https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=19813

To leave Dr. Thornburg a question before the interview, go to the ww.K12OpenSource.com wiki, click on "Interviews" from the menu to the left, and then click on Dr. Thornburg's name under July 27th; or click here:

http://k12opensource.wikispaces.com/Thornburg+Podcast

Here's hoping this series will be helpful!

Monday, July 10, 2006

Report from NECC 2006

This was the crowd that attended David Thornburg's inaugural session at the Open Source Lab in San Diego for the 2006 National Educational Computing Convention. The lab was almost always so full for our sessions that attendees would stand at the email stations in the back to follow along. We even had full attendance at the final session of the conference, when most people are thinking about--or have already started for--home. (Of course, that was yet another session on moodle, which has the most significant buzz of any Open Source application in education.)

More photos are available at www.flickr.com. Photos of the Open Source lab are tagged with "OpenSourceLab" while a more general search for "necc" or "necc2006" currently pulls up several hundred others. Paul Nelson (who took the shot above) recorded a couple of interviews that are available as podcasts at www.k12os.org. Those who attended or volunteered can contribute to our wiki page for future events at http://necc2006.pbwiki.com/wrapup.

Many thanks to our volunteers, presenters, and attendees. And a great big thanks to ISTE (www.iste.org) for providing the venue.