Before I was aware of the free and open source software alternatives, I would
have probably accepted this request as fair enough. But when I learned how good
Open Office was for example, and saw what OpenOffice.org had to say on their
website, "You can install this software on every computer in the school and on
every pupil's and every teacher's computer at home without paying any license
fees. Please encourage others to do so..." I had to ask these questions:
Why are public education departments buying software at such an expense, and
insisting that their staff and students use the same, when the equivalent
alternatives in software are not only free, open and more flexible, but are more
equitable, accessible, usable and reliable for the students and teachers?
And while we are considering that question I'd like to put forward
another:
Why are those same public departments investing so much in a culture and
practice of copyright, intellectual property and user pays business models when
technology such as the Internet, free and open source software, and concepts
like open courseware make it economically viable to at last offer a free and
open education equally to all?
Group items tagged
Creative Commons - 0 views
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Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization We work to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons" - the body of work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing. CC provides free, easy-to-use legal tools Our tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work. The Creative Commons licenses enable people to easily change their copyright terms from the default of "all rights reserved" to "some rights reserved."
Sribd - 0 views
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Reading and Publishing... evolved. Millions of documents and books at your fingertips! Read, print, download, and send them to your mobile devices instantly. Or upload your PDF, Word, and PowerPoint docs to share them with the world's largest community of readers.
Cumberland County School District Shares My Big Campus Testimonial - 0 views
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Highlights how a school is using My Big Campus as a tool, but also to save money in the process.
Free and Open Source Software and Courseware - A User Guide - 0 views
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The above excerpt from the article I found at flexiblelearning.net stuck out to me because until I started reading The World is Open, I was not aware that there were free alternatives to such expensive software such as the Microsoft Office Suite that our district pays tens of thousands of dollars for each year to maintain the licenses. When I started using google docs, I was amazed at the sharing abilities and the many other capabilities that exist with such Open Source resources. At this point I have not actualy created documents in google docs but look forward to doing so.
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