Collaborative development efforts to create innovative, 'open source' software, information technology, and tools for educational organizations, teachers, and students are well underway. These information technologies and tools are being released under one or more open source licensing arrangements that allow one to acquire and use these tools at little or no cost.
The following are links to selected notable 'open source' education software products:
Education
Education
· Connexions - Contains educational materials at all levels, organized in small modules that can be connected into larger courses.
· Kuali - A suite of open source administrative software modules for use in higher education.
· Moodle - An open source Course Management or Learning Management System. It is a web application that educators can also use to create effective online learning sites.
· OpenEducationDisc - A collection of open source software products for students for computers running MS Windows.
· Open Learning Exchange ToolKit - A series of software tools that will help Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Centers quickly and inexpensively provide basic education services within their countries.
· Open Source Scripts for Education - This site provides access to a list of available open source education products.
· Sakai - An open source software for education, research and related scholarly activities.
· SchoolForge - A web site offering a range of free and open source education software for teachers and students.
Non-Education
· Apache Software - Originally known for being an open-source web server solution, it has now grown into a large collaborative software community with a wide range of complementary projects and products.
· Drupal - A widely used open source content management system (CMS) for web sites.
· JBOSS - An open source platform and development tools with everything you need to deploy, and host enterprise Java applications and services.
· Linux - A widely used open source operating system for small and large scale computer systems originally created by Linus Torvalds
· Mozilla & Firefox - A wide range of open source software products developed by the growing Mozilla 'open' development community. Products include the FireFox web browser, Thunderbird email system, Sea Monkey, etc.
· MySQL - An open source database management system (DBMS) that offers the full functionality of similar commercial products such as MS SQL, DB2, Oracle, etc.
· Open Office - A comprehensive open source software suite of office applications (e.g. word processing, spreadsheet, etc.) that provide very similar capabilities as MS Office.
· SugarCRM - A commercialized open source customer relationship management (CRM) software suite.
The following are selected links to web sites focused on mobile technologies and the many free or low cost education apps now being offered:
The following are links to selected organizations focused on 'open' education technologies and solutions:
· Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness - Looking into innovative and open solutions and developing and disseminating actionable best practices through collaborative, ongoing research.
· Classroom 2.0 - A social networking organization and web site focused on the growing community of educators interested in learning how to better use collaborative information technologies and solutions.
· Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources - Over 200 community colleges partnering to develop and use open educational resources, especially open textbooks for college courses.
· Consortium for School Networking - Empowering K-12 school districts, their leaders and staff to use new education technologies and tools to improve teaching and learning
· EduForge - A virtual collaborative learning and exploratory environment designed for the sharing of ideas, research outcomes and information about open source solutions.
· Open Educational Resources (OER) Commons - Providing access to a wide range of teaching and learning materials that may be freely used and shared - for elementary schools, high schools, and universities.
· Open Learning Exchange (OLE) - Developing a world-wide network of public-private grassroots organizations committed to providing universal basic education in nations where the need exists.
· Open Source Education Foundation - Seeking to enhance k-12 education through the use of technologies and concepts derived from the Free and Open Source Software movement.
· UNESCO Open Educational Resources - A UNESCO community of interest focused on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in higher education.
· WikiEducator and Open Education Resources (OER) Foundation - A collaborative community working on free content for e-Learning and various other projects building open education resources.
· WikiMedia Commons - An online repository of freely licensed, sharable educational photos and images available on the internet.
For more information about 'Open' Education Software Tools & Technologies, visit the education.cositech.net web site.
Are you using any open source education software or tools? Let us know about any solutions you would recommend to others.
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