Archive for the 'Education' Category

Hear maddog talk at Birmingham City University about “Making and Saving Money with Free Software and Open Hardware” - There is much confusion about how people can make or save money with Free Software. As it turns out, there are more ways that people can make money with Free Software than there are with closed source, proprietary software.  This talk illustrates some of those ways, how to formulate a business plan around Free Software and how to avoid traps that make unprofitable companies.

Register for your tickets at: http://lpi-uk.eventbrite.co.uk/

Jon “maddog” Hall is the Executive Director of Linux International (www.li.org), an association of computer users who wish to support and promote the Linux Operating System. During his career in commercial computing which started in 1969, Mr. Hall has been a programmer, systems designer, systems administrator, product manager, technical marketing manager, author and educator.

He has worked for such companies as Western Electric Corporation, Aetna Life and Casualty, Bell Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation, VA Linux Systems, and SGI. He currently works as an independent consultant, and is currently involved with bringing environmentally friendly computing to emerging marketplaces through Project Cauã (www.projectcaua.org), as well as consulting for Futura Networks, the parent company of Campus-Party.org

Mr Hall has worked on many systems, both proprietary and open, having concentrated on Unix systems since 1980 and Linux systems since 1994, when he first met Linus Torvalds and correctly recognized the commercial importance of Linux and Free and Open Source Software.

He has taught at Hartford State Technical College (HSTC), Merrimack College and Daniel Webster College. While at HSTC his students gave him the nickname of “maddog”.

Mr. Hall is the author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles, many presentations and one book, “Linux for Dummies”.

Mr. Hall has consulted with the governments of China, Malaysia and Brasil as well as the United Nations and many local and state governments on the use of Free and Open Source Software.

Mr. Hall serves on the boards of several companies, and several non-profit organizations.

Mr. Hall has traveled the world speaking on the benefits of Open Source Software having received his BS in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University, and his MSCS from RPI in Troy, New York.

The Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) will be holding an event on Open Educational Resources from 1800 hours at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA ( http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/london-office-guide.pdf).

This bookable event is free and open to all with buffet and refreshments. To book a place to attend, please follow this link: https://events.bcs.org/book/539/ (Closing date is 19^th February at 11:59pm).

Abstract

Open Educational Resources (OERs) range from learning/teaching tools to complete courses freely available online. OERs are growing in popularity and have featured highly in JISC priorities in the UK. There is a global drive for open resources through organisations such as UNESCO, which hosted the World Open Educational Resources Congress, in June 2012. Some high profile institutions have also shown their support for OERs namely: Oxford University, Open University, The University of Nottingham in the UK and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in America.

The aim of this presentation is to clarify the main characteristics of OERs and provide the tools to find and evaluate OERs.  Key themes and issues within the area of Open Educational Resources will be discussed. Current research in the area will also be explored.

Speaker

Ella Mitchell is currently Subject Librarian for the School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering at the University of East London. Ella has been working in academic libraries for 6 years and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). In March 2012 was awarded a short-term fellowship at the SCORE (Support Centre for Open Resources Education- http://www.open.ac.uk/score/) based at the Open University. Prior to this she was involved in a project team that developed an innovative online Information Literacy tool, Info skills, at the University of East London.  Presently Ella is working on a project with colleagues from across the academic library sector to investigate ways of collating and disseminating Information Literacy Open Educational Resources.

The Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) and BCS Bedford Branch will be holding a combined event on Thursday 15th March 2012 from 1800 hours at Hub Theatre, Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA (Location Maps) about Empirical Studies research at The Open University of Software Development (including mining Open Source repositories).

Please register for this event by e-mailing to mcs-computing-secretaries@open.ac.uk your dietary requirements and your name and affiliation as it should appear on your badge. Sandwiches and beverages from 18:00.

Speakers

Researchers from the Open University.

Abstract

Professional software practice is easily taken for granted, but the best practice embodies knowledge, experience and insight that can be shared to good effect. Empirical studies of software development aim to understand how software is actually engineered and maintained in practice, in order to develop better techniques and tools to support software developers and managers.

The Open University has a strong research record in qualitative and quantitative empirical research of professional software development, drawing on methods and theory from cognitive psychology and sociology among other disciplines to provide analytic insight. Our research is based on field studies of practices ranging from small start-ups to multi-national corporations.

The evening will start with brief talks overviewing the various research strands, followed by mingling around posters, where you can learn more details and discuss research challenges and opportunities in your organisation. Topics to be presented include ethnographic studies of agile development and scientific software development, mining open source repositories for vocabulary usage and for assessing architectural evolution, studies of expert software design and of meaningful changes in software development.

The Open Source Schools community, a project supported by Becta, is delighted to invite teachers and technical staff who use, or are interested in, open source software to participate in a friendly, informal day of sharing enthusiasm, experience, and expertise at NCSL’s Conference Centre in Nottingham, on Monday 20 July, 10.00 to 16.00.

Places are free for those working in schools or local authorities and for those presenting; there’s also the chance to stay at NCSL the night before for those interested.

We hope as many delegates as possible will be willing to offer presentations or facilitate discussions.
Topics are likely to include: Moodle, Open Source netbooks, design software, teaching programming, management information systems, and whatever you would like to talk about! Unconferences, such as TeachMeets and BarCamps, owe their success to their participants rather than organizers.

However, to inspire you and provoke discussion we have two keynote speakers:

Graham Attwell, Director of Pontydysgu, is well known in the field of technology-enhanced teaching and learning. Graham’s recent work focuses on new applications and approaches to e-Portfolios and Personal Learning Environments and use of social software for learning and knowledge development.

George Auckland, Head of Learning Innovation, BBC Learning, whose experience and expertise spans the original ‘open source’ education computer, the BBC Micro, and the most recent BBC open source project, BBC Open Lab.

There are further details at http://opensourceschools.org.uk/unconference09.

To register, create an account on our site, making sure you tick the ‘Unconference 09’ group. http://opensourceschools.org.uk/user/register, or join ‘Unconference 09’ via the groups menu if you’re already registered.

To offer a session, simply create a proposal at http://opensourceschools.org.uk/node/add/sessionproposal

The Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) are supporting an event on 23rd September 2008 starting around 1800 hours with Association for Survey Computing (ASC) and Market Research Society (MRS) considering the use of Open Source in the survey process.

This event will be a discussion and debate about Open Source Software in a ‘Question Time’ format with a panel of 4 informed members (from the Survey industry + OSSG). Drinks and a buffet will be provided.

Venue: The Old Doctor Butler’s Head, 2 Mason’s Avenue, City of London, EC2V 5BT http://www.shepherd-neame.co.uk/pubs/pubs.php/doctor

To book a place to attend this event (free to OSSG members) please email your name to the ASC administrator admin@asc.org.uk as places are limited.

Further details can be found at the MRS site here: http://www.mrs.org.uk/networking/asc/asc.htm and at the Asc site here:http://www.asc.org.uk/