One of the professional hats I wear is as the director of CoSN.org's K-12 Open Technologies Initiative. I also run the Open Source Pavilions and speaker series at the CUE.org and NECC ed tech conferences.Because I'm a passionate advocate for Free and Open Source Software in K-12, I've been feeling for a while that the time is right for a stand-alone social network around its use. There is a good K-12 Open Source group within the Classroom 2.0 community, but groups don't have the same full functionality as stand-alone networks, and also don't have the same visibility. So I've done some reconfiguring with my www.K12OpenSource.com domain, creating a collaborative site which I hope will help to build the Free and Open Source Software ecosystem in K-12. The wiki that was previously there is now at http://wiki.k12opensource.com/, and I've set up a Ning community just for Open Source in K-12 at http://community.K12OpenSource.com/.
I hope you'll come join the community and help to build it. I believe that having an inviting and easy-to-use social network will increase exposure, adoption, and idea-sharing around Open Source in K-12 at a time when it is truly needed (both financially and pedagogically). We'll also need some folks to start groups around favored programs--please consider coming and doing that!
http://community.k12opensource.com
Thanks for setting up this community! I joined today and look forward to learning more about open source and free resources. In the current economy crisis, schools need to be looking at free, safe web tools as alternatives to high ticket items. It will be interesting to see where it all goes!
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