Top 5 ways people in Primary Schools can contribute to open source projects

Posted on by primaryt

People working and learning Primary Schools benefit greatly from open source, with limited budgets available to spend on software since the e-learning credit pool of excessive levels of money were available schools have been shocked to find the reality of the cost of software so have opted for free hosted solutions which build their revenue from ads and other alternatives.


Open source tends to mean not for profit and this tends to mean the school pay nothing for the service, this is only possible if people who use the software contribute back to the community to improve the service.

How can you or someone in your school help the open source community?

1. Tell the community about your experiences using the product/service.

2. Proof read for bad grammar and speeling mistakes and/or write documentation for usage.

3. Create resources for the service (if applicable).

4. Recommend the service/product to a friend.

5. Donate to the organization providing the service/product.

If you do just 1 of 5 of these for each of the open source services you use then you are making your life slightly better each time.

How Bradford Primary Schools use Open source without knowing it

Posted on by primaryt

We find lots of schools opting for services provided by hosting companies that are based on open source. So open source is popular, but why?

If you asked a school if they knew what they were using open source they would glaze over, closed or open source isn’t of concern in a Primary school. The reason for this is that Primary Schools do not have the resources to invest in someone who can manage the code for the open source projects so open source is not a concern of theirs.
Free is good, this is the tipping point. “Owt for Nowt” as its often called in Bradford is supplied in many different ways.
The majority of the schools use an open source fault logging, hardware and software inventory and server monitoring service which is free & open source and available as a hosted service to any UK primary school.
On top of that many Bradford schools wont realize that the management/admin of Primary Email is actually open source and has been since Primary Email was first conceived. This wasn’t working too well in Primary Schools but when Primary Email became School Email and the secondary market showed interest in the source, Primary Email began to nurture a few contributors who now write modules for future releases, improving the service for both Primary and Secondary schools.
Do we expect Primary Schools to begin contributing to open source projects?
Yes, but in a different way. Secondary schools employ people who are technical so we can expect some technical feed back. Primary Schools should try to give as much guidance and leadership feedback to open source projects, leading the project developers so that developers can focus on code with a clear strategy and vision implemented by the school itself.

A flaw in "Spam Law"

Posted on by primaryt

Just had to chuckle to myself…

There is a law which basically means spammers (or mass email marketers) have to include an unsubscribe option in emails they send out.. I think this law is a great idea..
Surely this same law should be applied to “Mailshots” which is far more damaging to the environment?
Just seems crazy to me..
I’m not big on loads of laws getting passed but it seems we tend to over regulate new technology and forget their are much larger evils in play in the world today…

EEE Desktop is super slick

Posted on by primaryt
Had a demo of the EEE desktop in our office today.
The unit was sent to us to use in a primary school. They cost about £340 exc vat or so.
My only beef, no VGA/HDMI output on the model we had 🙁 This may not be accurate for all models.

But first meet our moody Engineer aka Cuddles

webcam

handle

clean -_-

cables + ports

low profile kb

slick design

save desktop space

Summer web surfing for pupils at home

Posted on by primaryt

Over the summer holidays your kids may want to use the internet and they may ask you about some good sites to visit or you may want to give them a few.

I recommend this site because it is a great starting place for gaming, collaborating and searching.
The easiest way to access the site is to give the child the URL or to ask them to google “School Safe Search“
Enjoy the summer everyone 🙂