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This amazing website helps you find open source alternatives to just about any type of software.

Great place to go find free open source alternatives to software. As you cut your budget for next year look here to see what you should use instead!

Open source software with much of functionality of the paid versions

Open source, digital textbooks coming to California schools The cash-strapped Golden State has decided that, starting next school year, schools will be able to use open source, digital textbooks for a number of math and science subjects. Ars talked with Brian Bridges, the Director of the California Learning Resources Network, which will be reviewing the texts, to find out more about what the program entails.

100 Excellent Open Access Journals for Educators

100 Excellent Open Access Journals for Educators

The free, open-source interactive digital teaching software Open Sankoré

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

Free open textbooks that are peer reviewed to be of higher calibre. Free online and low-cost in print. If you're looking at options, this is where you should go (if you're curriculum director or administrator.) Start here for free open textbooks.

Paul Stacy writes an excellent overview of Open Education (hat tip Stephen Downes edcurator extraordinaire) that is a great read for those trying to keep their finger on the pulse of the very rapidly changing landscape of education.

"Quotet RiP: A remix manifesto is an open source documentary about copyright and remix culture. Created over a period of six years, the film features the collaborative remix work of hundreds of people who have contributed to this website, helping to create the world's first open source documentary. end Quote Film good and active community of collaborators even better?

Free Power Point Slide shows with instruction on using any version of LInux, created under a Creative Commons License. You can open them with POwerPoint or impress in Open Office.

This is a cool grant requiring a 100 word essay about how technology benefits and helps education and is one I'll be doing in the fall -- it is only open to schools in the US but it is public and private -- check the website for rules and good luck. Info from their site: "Each year, Samsung's Hope for Education holds a contest where students from schools nationwide can write a 100-word essay about how technology benefits and helps education. In 2008, the top winner receives a grand prize of over $200,000 worth of Samsung technology, Microsoft software and cash grants from DIRECTV, as well as the SCHOOL CHOICE® educational television programming package. Entries are open now. Contest will run until August 31, 2008."

win a $200,000 grant by having your students write essays. This is exciting.

Open PD is a great opportunity for joining in and learning with others about the newest in technology.

Open professional development by Darren Draper and Friends. These opportunities will let you open up your classroom and join in with others to learn collaboratively about blogs, wikis, and more. Take a look at it.

Proprietary v. open source with notes on why one over the other.

Cool, informational listing

Very nice article sharing about the open source alternatives to proprietary programs.

The availability of free open textbooks, Webinars, Podcasts, and open source content college courses are described as to how they support and influence adult learning.

Open source educational tools development site for school. Large projects including student information systems, utilities, anti-virus and more. Fun take on the Sourceforge concept of open-source commercial developers.

"July 31, 2011 By David Glenn Cambridge, Mass. This past April in Switzerland, Lawrence Lessig gave an impassioned lecture denouncing publishers' paywalls, which charge fees to read scholarly research, thus blocking most people from access. It was a familiar theme for Mr. Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School who is one of the world's most outspoken critics of intellectual-property laws. But in this speech he gave special attention to JSTOR, a not-for-profit journal archive. He cited a tweet from a scholar who called JSTOR "morally offensive" for charging $20 for a six-page 1932 article from the California Historical Society Quarterly. The JSTOR archive is not usually cast as a leading villain by open-access advocates. But Mr. Lessig surely knew in April something that his Swiss audience did not: Aaron Swartz-a friend and former Harvard colleague of Mr. Lessig's-was under investigation for misappropriating more than 4.8 million scholarly papers and other files from JSTOR. On July 19, exactly three months after Mr. Lessig's speech, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging that Mr. Swartz had abused computer networks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and disrupted JSTOR's servers. If convicted on all counts, Mr. Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison."

An Open (Institutional) Learning Network

One of the best ways to do that is to experiment with the courses you'd be taking when you enroll in school. With these open education resources, you can take all the classes you want - not for credit, of course - without paying a dime.

You can not only take advantage of the great resources open source has, but also become a part of a movement that shares more freedom of ideas. In these lectures, you'll learn more about the open source philosophy and what it can be used for.

These days, you have a huge arsenal of tools at your disposal, from word processors, to content management systems, organization, and more, many of them open source and even free.

It's easy to say that you're ready to change the world, but how do you get started? Even if you don't have a specific cause or mission in mind, expanding your education and understanding of the world will give you a solid foundation for your ultimate adventures. These 100 awesome open courses, ranging from health and medicine to engineering to religion to policy making to media will get you on your way.