Education
Software and services for Education
Featured Stories
The Open Source School
Following the adventure of putting together an open source school: Albany Senior High School in Auckland, New Zealand. covers pedagogy, learning, software, hardware, learning management systems, libraries and anything else I feel like talking about.
Adam Gifford: Open source route frees the mind
More on Albany High School - one of New Zealands newest schools - which is going Open Source.
One thing holding back the greater adoption of free software in this country is free software.
Schools could use Linux and other open source technologies, but the Education Ministry very kindly negotiates on their behalf with Microsoft for a licence covering all New Zealand state and integrated schools.
It's a gift that Albany Senior High School, which opened last year, looked at and rejected.
Koha 3.2 : The next step
We're about to implement two exciting features in our library: RFID and self-check. It's not common for school libraries to use RFID, but as the cost comes down and there is more support for what it can do I'm sure it'll become increasingly popular. Once you make the transition from a 'dumb' tattle-tape security system to and RFID system, you can have a lot more fun with your items.
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Open Street Map
This is a cool project: a wiki-based street map of the world to compete with Google's maps. It's quite amazing how dependent we are on Google to provide mapping mash-ups for the web: geocaching, real estate sales, finding our way to places, business directories etc. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a community-owned alternative that couldn't be turned into a revenue stream at a future date? Well, yes that would be nice. Oh wait.. there is one: OpenStreetMap.org
Create panoramic images
I stumbled across this application via the http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/
"Goal: an easy to use cross-platform panoramic imaging toolchain based on Panorama Tools.
With Hugin you can assemble a mosaic of photographs into a complete immersive panorama, stitch any series of overlapping pictures and much more."
Summer reading...
When I'm not learning to be a father, I try to read as much as I can (which falls short of as much as I'd like to). One of Koha's cool features is the ability to create and share lists. Here's a quick list called 'Mark's Favourite Books' which I'll continue to update. Happy reading...
I have over fifteen years experience in systems and network configuration and support. For most of that time I have been working with Open Source Software, and believe that Open Source software provides the best solutions for business, educational and personal use.
