The goal of RubyGrade is to provide an opensource online gradebook system similar to Engrade and Chalksite . RubyGrade enables teachers to keep track of students' grades and attendance records. The main difference being that RubyGrade is open source, free to use, and can be downloaded to run on a local server.
Still demo, opensource software for web conferencing. BigBlueButton version 0.63 shipped with support for conversion of Microsoft Office documents, localization, API examples and more.
One of my students, Z, brought this application desktop customizer to me for his geniushour project. A very cool way to customize a Windows Computer XP-8. Interesting.
For this list, we've collected educational apps from a variety of categories that can replace popular commercial software. In many cases, the open source options listed here offer features that aren't matched by their closed source counterparts. And while we limited our list to 50 apps, you can find many more on the Web.
Open source online video conferencing and distance collaboration tool. Can be installed on Linux web server and contains many standard collaborative features such as voice/video chat, shared whiteboard, screen sharing, and more.
Interesting tidbit in their press release this week:
"Flat World has announced 17 new author
titles under contract. Flat World's in-classroom beta test gets underway this
week, with 20 participating colleges and universities nationwide."
Open Textbooks may be closer -- this model is a more hybridized version. If we had a "wiki to print" tool or technology, then we could literally have grassroots teachers writing and creating textbooks together. This is interesting to follow
Permalink for a list of 157 Free Applications for the PC and MAC. This list includes all of the top apps, and some that may suprise you. If you are into open source or freeware, this article from PCMag is a must read.
Free-Reading is an open source instructional program that helps educators teach early literacy. Because it is open source, it represents the collective wisdom of a wide community of teachers and researchers. Free-Reading contains a 40-week scope and sequence of primarily phonological awareness and phonics activities that can support and supplement a typical kindergarten or first grade "core" or "basal" program.
Those people who are open source junkies -- this is a great google gadget custom search engine to add to your igoogle or gadget. It will help you easily find open source software.