The K-12 Open Source Classroom

Monthly Archives: June 2010

Google’s New Music Service..

Posted on by Posted in OSS Applications .
Google Music

Google Soon To Release iTunes Competitor?

Drumroll please…in the style of Microsoft’s naming conventions, Google will name their new music offering…wait for it…Google Music!  That, apparently, is the buzz this week.  Google will provide an alternative to iTunes, with all indication they will name it Google Music.  I could care less about the name, just as long as we will see some new, feature-rich competitor to iTunes.  I LOATHE iTunes.  Unfortunately, we still need to use it for the iPod Touch.  Yes, I know we can put on Linux OSs onto it, but at this point I decided not to.  I will be very interested to see what Google does with this.  We already see how much of an impact Android has made on the mobile phone market (September will be here soon for me!), so this, hopefully, can provide a strong competitor to iTunes.

Some things left unanswered:

  • how will Google Music integrate with Android and other Linux OSs
  • how will we in education utilize Google Music, as I assume Google Videos and Google Shows will soon follow

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image from: dotcomconfessions.com

Scholarships for Open Source Developers

Posted on by Posted in open source, OSS Applications, Professional Development .
Fedora Logo

Do All Educational Roads Lead to Fedora?

We reviewed OpenSource.com, a webpage from Red Hat, awhile ago (http://www.k12opensourceclassroom.org/?p=241).  In looking at it recently, I found an article about the Fedora Foundation (Red Hat) providing scholarships for open source developers.  How cool!!  According to the article:

recognizes one high school senior per year for contributions to the Fedora Project and free software/content in general. With a selection process that looks at the student’s contributions to Fedora and other free software projects and uses members of the Fedora community as references, it’s a little different from most scholarships you might be used to seeing. In addition to $2,000 USD for each of 4 years of an undergraduate education in any field of the recipient’s choice, the scholarship includes 4 years of annual all-expenses-paid trips to the nearest FUDCon

(FUDcon is Fedora’s Developers Conference.  )

A HUGE bravo to Red Hat/Fedora for this.  What a great way to increase interest in programming and open source!  Especially in these economic times, we need more students ‘tinkering’ with code, developing applications for Linux, mobile phones (ANDROID!), and just for learning.  The article (http://opensource.com/education/10/5/scholarships-open-source-contributors) discusses many of the things we’re talking about at the national level, with STEM schools and trying to encourage girls into the fields of science and technology.  As the daddy of two smart little girls, I definitely want these options open to both of my girls!  Definitely worth checking out!

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imaged used under Creative Commons license by flickr user jgbrl