Sessions at Open Source Bridge 2009 about Education

Wednesday 17th June 2009

• New Ways for Teaching Children Software Programming

  by Howard Abrams

  Software programming has come a long way for students and younger children since the days of Logo. Syntax has been replaced with connecting blocks and the triangle turtle has been replaced with custom artwork children create themselves.

  Other changes include the assumptions we make when teaching children to program. For instance, multi-threading and event processing are easier to teach than functions.

  While computers are ubiquitous in children’s lives, how much of using computers is being transferred into training computers? And does programming offer something beyond the utility to something akin to re-enforcing the academic and problem-solving skills taught in school?

  This session discusses the new crop of kid-friendly programming languages as well as how best to teach them. This includes:
  * Etoys
  * Alice
  * Scratch

  The session focuses on Scratch, as the best interface for teaching younger children, but also shares a teacher’s perspective of what works and what doesn’t work and how the open source community can help create a (potentially new) environment helpful to both students and their teachers.

  • Education

  At 3:50pm to 4:35pm, Wednesday 17th June

  Coverage note

Thursday 18th June 2009

• Python for Teachers

  by Kirby Urner

  Portland is at the cutting edge when it comes to pioneering a world class 21st century education for its students. "The Silicon Forest":http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2009/03/pps-has-friends-in-silicon-forest.html is stepping up to the plate. Python plays a role in the action.

  Starting with West Precinct, Hillsboro Police Department, "Saturday Academy":http://www.saturda... has been teaching FOSS concepts (free and open source software), later morphing into a more mainstream form of "Pythonic Math". Winterhaven (Portland Public, a "geek hogwarts") has also gotten in on the "pilot studies":http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/winterhaven/

  Kirby Urner, former math teacher and consultant to McGraw-Hill, veteran of OSCON, EuroPython and Pycon circuits, will give you the inside story on all of the above, having been an active player in helping Portland remain a "FOSS capital" ("Christian Science Monitor, 2005":http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/p03s02-ussc.html). Kirby is a curriculum writer for "4D Solutions":http://www.4dsol..., also CMO for a FOSS project involving "coffee shops":http://coffeeshopsne.... He is also "an IEEE member":http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2008/11/ieee-presentation.html and past web wrangler for the Buckminster Fuller Institute ("BFI.org":http://www.bfi.org).

  Bring your laptop with Python installed and follow along as we go through examples from a 21st century high school mathematics curriculum, such as we're currently prototyping and implementing in niche markets.

  • Education
  • FOSS
  • Python

  At 1:45pm to 3:30pm, Thursday 18th June

  Coverage note

• Building Open Source Communities in Higher Education

  by Jose Cedeno, Eric Betts and Justin Gallardo

  A large number of computer science students leave school without getting the kind of real world experience working on Open source project can give them. They have not been exposed to large code bases, had to deal with constructive feedback, and may lack basic skills such as writing good bug reports, good coding practices, submitting patches, and other project collaboration skills. Open source communities provide excellent venues for learning these skills while still in school.

  This presentation will focus on how Oregon State University is trying to encourage more students to participate in Open source, and use Open source tools and development practices. We accomplish this by providing a custom Open source hosting environment (Beaversource) with social networking features aimed at removing many of the stigmas and fears students have when approaching Open source. This social framework also helps people with similar interests find each other so that they can work together.

  The information in the presentation will be of use to people in academia who want to encourage students to learn more about open source, as well as those in the open source community who want to engage more students.

  • community building
  • Education
  • Open Source

  At 3:50pm to 4:35pm, Thursday 18th June

  Coverage note

• Running an EDU on OSS

  by Michael Brewer

  With the current economy, we're seeing enrollments in higher education rise while budgets get cut; in these tough times, OSS allows institutions to empower their greatest asset: their people. In this presentation, we compare and contrast several popular enterprise-class EDU OSS tools, including Moodle, Sakai, .LRN, and Kuali, discussing their architectures, strengths and weaknesses, and how to get involved with making them better.

  • Education
  • kuali
  • Moodle
  • Open Source
  • Sakai

  At 5:00pm to 5:45pm, Thursday 18th June

  Coverage note