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Hello. Thanks for having me here!

A little bit about moi

16 years in the business of education and technologyAfter about 12 of them I decided I better learn something about the field I'm working it,so I'm currently taking my master's in educational technology.

3 things

With that long in education, there's 3 things I know:1) money's almost always tight (if by some chance there's a ton of it, somepolitician is in charge of spending it, and it rarely goes to the right place)2) everything is political (especially in the US ... anytime public money is spent, thepublic gets involved)3) the inertia is unbelievable (inside the school system, it's very hard to get thingsdone. Union rules, traditions, layers, etc.)

OSS is an enabler

For all of these three things, free and open source software is a major, major benefit.OSS is like the PC (minicomputer) in the age of the mainframe ... sneaks in through theback door .... allows people to actually get things done. Passionate creative peoplefinding a way.When there's no money, no problemWhen all decisions are political, no worriesWhen your school is very bureaucratic, who caresOSS allows you to just do the things you want to do as a teacher, as an educationleader ... and not ask permission. And not asking permission is the way stuff gets done.

For me too

That was true for me in the business of education as well.When I started out, we had no budget and little hope of getting one. I was buildingonline collaboration tools for students and educators in the late 1990s ... and there wasno way we were spending $10K for a ColdFusion license. No way we were going spendthousands on IIS licenses.So OSS was my saving grace ... a key factor in my ability to have had the career I'vehad.

3 projects

I'm going to talk briefly about 3 projects that I've run. All I really want to do is share whatwe did and what we learned. I think that just about everyone these days is smarter thanI was as we were running these projects. But maybe there are a few things you can pickup that will helpful as you proceed in your projects.Something I want to ask is:- how many here are developers?- how many are managers/executives?- educators?- students?- government/policy/NGOs?That will help me tailor a little of what I'm going to say.- all managers: more buzzwords- all educators: talk about constructivism and situated learning- all students: find a bar and discuss philosophy over beer- all government: endeavor to use as many words as possible while sayingabsolutely nothing- all developers: look for the door and run!Over the past decade, I've led the development of 3 learning management systemsusing free and open source software.A learning management system is sort of a species of a content management system. Itallows you to structure and deliver information and experiences (it's usually heavier onthe information than the experience) to people who want to learn (or are being forced topretend to learn). It's often called a course management system by those who want tomake the perfectly valid point that you can't really manage learning: you create anenvironment and learning either occurs or it does not, depending on some magic thatwe don't really understand happening in a student's head.

First project: 1999

Edutainment, collaborationTasks, activities, earn points, social (message boards, and whoa: site messaging)500K registered usersPerl (old-skewl now) was the toolboxMason was the engine (Mason is a templating engine that Amazon still uses)Linux was the foundationMySQL was the memoryFirst time started with bones and muscles and organsNot molecules and atoms: we had some starting points

Second project: 2005

Video-based instructionVideos, responses, quizzes, message boards, testsAbout a thousand schools engaged in a $20/student programPHP was the toolboxMambo/Joomla was the engineLinux foundationMySQL memorySecond time: legs and arms and heads: could put a body together pretty quickly

Third project: 2008

Education mash-up: learning in the web2.0 worldText, video, documents, multiple sites: youtube, scribd, etc.About 60K schools in North America have accessNo sign-in requiredPHP was the toolboxMoodle was the engineLinux foundationMySQL memoryThird time: started out with a whole cloned body ... just had to customize it.

Bigger, better, more fuel-efficient engines

Let's look at the engines:-> Mason -> Joomla -> MoodleGet more, more, moreCan focus on higher-level functionalityCan focus on contentCan achieve goals without re-inventing the wheel.But we didn't even have to re-invent the internal combustion engine!

Giants

Sir Isaac Newton said, "If I have been able to see further than others, it is because Ihave stood on the shoulders of giants."OSS allows you to stand on the shoulders of giantsBenefitsTime/money - LOCBugsMaintainability