This session will provide a whirlwind high-level overview of how educators and their IT resource group can harness the power of open source software within their instruction and IT infrastructure to provide better and more cost effective solutions for education. If you've been curious as to the buzz about open source, have had it with enterprise "solutions" that just don't work the way you want it to, or have an open and curious mentality towards IT, this session will show you the door to new and creative possibilities with open source integration. Most importantly, fair comparisons and analyses will be made weighing the costs and benefits of open source versus other mainstream alternatives. The session will also show how the IT infrastructure at TJHSST supports these open source solutions; a brief tour will be given afterwards and the session will conclude with a roundtable discussion of the concepts introduced.

View this presentation online (HTML/images)

Download this presentation as a ZIP of images (8MB)

Download this presentation in PDF format (22MB)

Download this presentation in PDF format with presenter notes (23MB)

You can view the mind map used to gather information for this presentation through MindMeister: http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show_public/6581960

• Free and open source software organizations/entities

  • The Open Source Initiative [Wikipedia]
  • The GNU Project [Wikipedia], and its definition of free software
  • The Free Software Foundation [Wikipedia]
  • Linux [Wikipedia]

• Linux distributions

  • Ubuntu [Wikipedia] has gained a lot of steam recently with its quick development and focus on ease of use
  • Red Hat [Wikipedia], now known as Fedora [Wikipedia], is generally recognized to be one of the first to provide Linux as an enterprise style offering, and is now focusing more on innovation
  • Debian [Wikipedia] is now more suited for servers, as Ubuntu has tweaked it for better desktop use
  • Others include Arch Linux, Slackware, Gentoo, and many more

• Edubuntu [Wikipedia], the education oriented Linux distro

  • Using Edubuntu
  • Getting Started with Edubuntu

• Applications

  • OpenOffice.org [Wikipedia], an office productivity suite - replaces Microsoft Office
  • Mozilla Firefox [Wikipedia], a more robust and secure web browser, available in numerous languages
  • Mozilla Thunderbird [Wikipedia], a full featured desktop email client, available in numerous languages

• Web applications

  • Zimbra Collaboration Suite [Wikipedia] packs an entire mail system into one - replacement for Microsoft Exchange
  • Moodle [Wikipedia] is the most widely used learning management system (LMS)
  • The Sakai Project [Wikipedia] is gaining popularity with many colleges/universities and has more built in features
  • MediaWiki [Wikipedia] is the backend for Wikipedia and is the most popular wiki software
  • WordPress [Wikipedia] dominates the Internet as the most popular blogging software
  • Squid Web Proxy [Wikipedia] filters inbound and outbound traffic any way you want it to

Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you may have at: dtran at tjhsst dot edu.