students

When I first started to learn how to code and program, as a student and during the pre-internet era, it was common practice to share your source code as you were creating it. My classmates and I assumed that was the best way for us to learn—from each other.

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Boundless, the company that builds on existing open educational resources to provide free alternatives to traditionally costly college textbooks, has released 18 open textbooks under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA), the same license used by Wikipedia. Schools, students and the general public are free to share and remix these textbooks under this license. The 18 textbooks cover timeless college subjects, such as accounting, biology, chemistry, sociology, and economics. Boundless reports that students at more than half of US colleges have used its resources, and that they expect its number of users to grow. » Read more

In late January, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled the Open Book Project (remarks, project page, press notice), an initiative to expand access to free, high-quality educational materials in Arabic, with a particular focus on science and technology. These resources will be released under open licenses that allow their free use, sharing, and adaptation to local context. » Read more

Chances are you know about the digital divide, but not about the Kramden Institute's work to help hardworking students in grades 3 - 12 who don't have a computer in their home cross it. You also might be shocked to learn that while information technology seems to be ubiquitous, a full 23% of U.S. households still don't have a computer. » Read more

Great things for open government happened last year on November 15-16 at the 4th annual Capitol Camp event, organized and hosted by the New York State Senate and the New York State Office of Information Technology Services, in collaboration with the Center for Technology in Government.

I have discussed recently the NY State Senate progressive stance on open government and its embrace of open source. Capitol Camp 2012 was another display of the powerful benefits the adoption of open practices in government can bring to the public. The event involved an unconference-day and a hackathon-day, both of them fully open to the public.

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Many educators might have been hesitant in the past regarding embracing open source software. But not anymore as the number that has taken to open source software (OSS) has increased significantly over the years. As more teachers as well as institutions are now engaging with organizations such as Open Source Schools, SchoolForge among others. Consequently, these educators have begun to realize the potential inherent in OSS that can help transform education in many ways.

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Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa. For many years, it was regarded as the breadbasket of Africa. But since Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980, Robert Mugabe has been the leader, and the fate of the country has largely been tied to him and his policies.

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Enter the black raspberry. Rubus occidentalis.

It's an ominous name for an ominous fruit: the black raspberry. As the owner of a new Raspberry Pi, I realized that I was going to have to, at some point, open the box and do something with it.

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Running students' submitted programs is a security challenge for any university Computer Science department. When Harvard University contacted me about some work they are doing with the "sandbox" tool on Fedora 17, we decided it would be a great opportunity to see how they could get more out of it and share our findings with the community. 

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There is something about a new year that always seems so promising and energizing. It doesn’t seem like too long ago we were saying thank heavens for 2011, and now it’s time to bring in 2012. Before we close this chapter, let’s take a quick look at the ten most popular articles in the education community for 2011, starting with number ten and counting down.

10. How open source tools can create balanced learning environments » Read more