The K-12 Open Source Classroom

Bringing Open Source (Free and Free) into the Classroom

Posts Tagged audacity

Open Source Alternatives–Osalt

May 19

Posted by admin in OSS Applications, open source | No Comments

Osalt Logo

Osalt: Your Guide to All Apps Open Source

Looking for an open source application to one of your proprietary ones?  Not sure what’s out there in a particular category?  Then you definitely need to visit the OSALT website.  Osalt, or Open Source As Alternative, lists top open source applications and top proprietary applications.  Right from the front page you can begin finding good OSS alternatives to programs such as Photoshop, Citrix, iTunes, and Nero Burning ROM.   For instance, it lists Amarok (I use this one!) and Songbird as alternatives to iTunes.  I definitely recommend Amarok, as I use it.  Songbird is a great choice, although they recently stopped Linux development.

On the site, you can click one of the Top 10s and see a review of the application.  Looking at Dia, for instance, you will see a link to the website, a brief description, a rating (3 out of 5 stars), and other apps similar to Dia.  Dia, if unaware, allows you to receive some of the Visio functionality.  In schools, we use it in place of Inspriation.

You can also just search or go through the directory.  A definite must is to subscribe to their RSS feed, to receive updates of new software.  Osalt definitely will help you in finding the Open Source alternatives to go an open source world!

http://www.osalt.com/

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Dell 2100 Apps For Schools

Feb 5

Posted by admin in OSS Applications, hardware, open source | 2 Comments

Open Office Logo

Open Office Found a Place On Our Dell 2100s

With limited funds from our EETT/ARRA grant, we just barely scratched purchasing 60 Dell 2100s, 3 of the specially made carts ($3,500 each!), projectors, document cameras, and professional development.  After this, we will could not afford the extra $3,000 to purchase MS Office for all the netbooks.  And truthfully, I personally did not want to do that.  Yes, Open Office looks a little different, but in all reality, we made a great choice skipping this purchase.  It took my instructional folks a little bit of time until they were comfortable with it, but now they understand it and can use it confidently.  I anticipate some learning curves with the teachers when the carts are delivered as well.  Students?  Nah, they will pick it up with no problem and make the point moot.  I really hope this can lead us to some serious discussions in moving forward.  When we look at the 3,000+ computers in our district, the thought of paying $50.00 each for an Office upgrade, at a total of at least $150,000, does not appeal too much to me.  So let’s see, that is 150 desktops we could purchase.  150 SMART Boards.  20 SMART Tables.  100 sets of ‘clickers,’ the student response systems.  You get the point.  At this point, though, I am just happy to have the leg in the door to move the discussion forward.

What else did we put on the 2100s?  With the integrated webcam and microphone, Audacity was a no brainer.  We envision teachers and students creating animated movies, podcasts, and more with those.  Photostory went on them as well, and while not an open source product, it is a free app available for Windows.  And that’s pretty much the end of the apps installed.  I would like to look at Alice in the future.  Allowing students to create their own ‘games’ in place of a Powerpoint would be a great thing as well.  We also will rely heavily on many of the web apps out there.  We use Wordle in our district, as well as VoiceThread and Animoto.  They all provide great interaction for students.  So that pretty much sums up our 2100s.  Now we will put them out in the schools and see how the teachers use them.  Time will tell if we add any more applications, or how these ones work, but we will let you know!

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Open Source in Schools

Feb 7

Posted by admin in Uncategorized | No Comments

With the economic funk we all find ourselves in, what better time to see a fundamental shift to free and open source software. And to some extent, we are seeing schools look at other tools instead of proprietary software. Of course alternate browsers like Firefox are getting a look due to security concerns with certain other browsers. Then we see huge amounts of teachers using the audio application Audacity for creating podcasts, recording sound, and a host of other reasons. While a great resource, I wonder if people use it because of it’s free and open source status, or just because there are really no other options out there, short of Garageband for the Mac.

So, have we come that far? I think until schools begin replacing MS Office with Open Office, Photoshop with Gimp, and a strong move to some Linux operating systems, we will not be able to say schools are moving far into the open source realm.

When I see how much we pay annually for our Ghost licenses, our VNC licenses, our Windows licenses, etc, etc, I question this cost. In our schools, we hear the complaints that the computers are old (and they are–a good portion over 5 years old). Now, when I look at the costs involved with these licenses, my department alone could purchase a few hundred laptops (the Dell and Asus minis) or a good hundred desktops per year.

So in my district, we are not there yet. We are starting to dabble in Ubuntu and Xandros with the Asus eeePCs and Dell Minis. For all netbooks, we are not putting XP or MS Office on, to save costs, so that appears like we are beginning that move, albeit slowly. I would like to begin looking at the server side as well, as we are huge into the Windows Server side of things, which besides the cost, also is limiting us in terms of things we want to do.

We will continue to make progress, and if these economic times have a silver liner, I think they will force us all to look at our spendings. If we can save $50,000 or more, and we’re in a small-mid sized district, per year, some of these moves will be justified.

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Wecome to the Open Source Classroom!

Jun 11

Posted by admin in Uncategorized | No Comments

This little venture has been a long time in the making.  Starting with the ‘slowly-being-phased-out’ resource eElementary, I really started to see software (proprietary) as not ‘getting’ it for educators.  First off, you pay $20,000+ for a district wide site license, usually paying that annually.  $20 K is in the low range too.  Then you cannot adjust it to meet your needs, hence not using the software to its fullest potential.

So slowly, both personally and professionally, I began to explore Open Source.  It began with Firefox 1.0.  That browser just made so much sense–and the plugins and the about:config command just worked for me.  I could tweak it for me.  What a concept. Then in the classroom, I began using Audacity for podcasting.  Open Office came next.  Finally, last March, the big plunge–a Linux operating system.  Yes, I use Ubuntu.  I do it proudly and with no regrets.  I love the aspect that I can add to it, take away from it, and so much more.

So my love and passion for Open Source will come through in this site.  I hope to add podcasts eventually, along with demos of open source tools like Moodle, Gallery, and more.  So tune in, capture the RSS into your reader, and enjoy the ride!

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