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The great educational minicomputer that didn't want to exist
During the Assembly for Quality Basic Education in Kathmandu I had the possibility to play a bit with an interesting mini-computer designed for primary school education, the TeacherMate from Innovations for Learning (IfL), and to talk with Seth Weinberger, IfL Executive Director.
A little known but very powerful tool for homeschooling: Free Software
Free Software is widely used in education due to its lower cost and huge flexibility. Homeschooling is relatively popular in the USA and other countries. One would expect Free Software to be very popular among homeschoolers, due to their own philosophy: how could an homeschooling advocate not love software that is all about being “free as in freedom” and doing things by yourself? Reality, however is quite different: compared to Windows and Mac, Free Software is still almost unknown in the homeschooling community.
Digital Culture online course for parents, teachers and everybody else!
Here is a new online course, one teaching concepts that every parent, teacher or other educator should know. Please write me (mfioretti, at nexaima.net) or contact directly VIS if you are interested in an English edition.
One hour with the XO laptop in a Nepali school
On Nov. 5th, 2009, during the first OLE Assembly in Kathmandu, I visited a class that uses the XO laptop in the Binayak Bal School of Badal Gaun, Nepal.
OOo4Kids, the office suite for all children... and their parents
OOo4Kids is a special version of OpenOffice.org (the popular, free and easy to use alternative to Microsoft Office) which is very interesting and useful not only for schools, but also for many adult users. Besides, interaction with developers seems much simpler and friendlier than in many other Free Software projects. Keep reading to know, straight from OOo4Kids developer Eric Bachard, what is that makes OOo4kids unique.
The "Respect Creativity" project from EMCA Italia: do they tell the whole story?
In August 2009 an administrative employee of an Italian school announced on a teachers mailing list that his school had received an invitation to a European Educational Project for protection of creativity and copyright by Dott.ssa Isabella Longo, Coordinator of EMCA Italia (EMCA is the European Music Copyright Alliance).