On June 2nd, 2007, there will be an open source conference for teachers at PH Zürich. So far we have only about 20 participants, so I hope there will be more until next week when registration closes!

Update 2007-05-07: Several good news concerning our upcoming event: First of all, congratulations to Dell choosing Ubuntu as option for the computers! Second, Philipp Tobler just pointed out a Slashdot post on educational open source software. And third, this morning Futura.tv recorded a short interview for Swiss televison about our teacher training. I don’t know yet when they’ll broadcast the report but I’ll update this post as soon as I know.

Update 2007-05-22: Now the short video clip about our upcoming OSS educational event will be shown on Swiss televisions.

In today’s issue “Der Bund” technology journalist Nick Lüthi wrote a clear statement about the use of Free and Open Source Software in education. It’s all about this week’s votation of the 8.5 million Swiss Francs the city of Bern intends to spend on new computers for their schools. Meanwhile, a hot debate on what to vote is happening on the Wilhelm Tux mailing list. Personally, I more or less agree with the current project since I assume the local IT people in charge will accomplish their promise to “apply Free and Open Source Software as far as possible.” Of course, there is still a lot of bottom-up advocacy necessary, like our OpenSource@School event for teachers some days ago.

Last week’s event about open source software in Bern was a success. I just posted a short review (in German) on a seperate page.

Yesterday, the Berner Zeitung BZ published the article “Stadtrat hat Chance vergeben” written by Mathias Born. He did a great researching job interviewing several people about the current situation in Bern so even pro-linux.de website summarized the article. Theo Schmidt started already a discussion on the WilhelmTux mailing list and I hope to be able to help in organizing such a information event about Open Source software as promised in the text…
Update 1: There are now 57 mostly interesting comments about the Pro-Linux article - some of them made me quite sad to say that I live in this city…
Update 2: Now I got active and sent an email to the WilhelmTux mailing list asking for help organizing a Linux/Open Source marketing event on 6th of May at the University of Bern. Who joins the presentation? Every help welcome!

Thanks to Theo Schmidt WilhelmTux published yesterday a highly interesting press release about the current ongoings in the Bernese school IT project. As reported earlier by the news papers the meeting in the parliament last Thursday ended with a very close result:

Der weiter gehenden Antrag der Fraktion GB/JA jedoch, voll auf freie Software zu setzen, bedeute letztlich nichts anderes als die Rückweisung der gesamten Vorlage, betonte die Schuldirektorin. […] Der Entscheid gegen die ausschliesslich freie Software-Lösung fiel mit 35 zu 27 Stimmen jedoch relativ knapp [aus].

So that’s politics - everyone counts! If only 5 persons of the parliament had voted differently (or if 9 pro-Linux politicians more had attended the votation…) apparently the entire school IT project would have needed to be realized with Free and Open Source Software only!
Update: In “Der Bund” was today a short reprint of the press release of WilhelmTux.

In today’s newspaper “Der Bund” there is an article about the software discussion in the city parliament. As reported earlier we, some people of the Free Software movement in Bern, organized a presentation about Open Source software in education for politicians. Apparently, the work was somewhat fruitful since in today’s commission hearing Debian developer Gaudenz Steinlin is invited to talk about the advantages of Open Source software. However the meeting is going, I’m happy the newspapers are beginning to report about the issue since this sensitizes the public in case we have to fight against the announced voting.

Last thursday various people of the Linux User Group Bern, WilhelmTux and other organisations hold an information event at the University of Bern about the use of Open Source Software (OSS) in education. Due to the large IT project (8.6 million Swiss francs) the city of Bern is planning, we felt it necessary to inform politicians about today’s and tomorrow’s possibilities of OSS. With several demos and case studies of realized Linux projects in schools the speakers convinced the 9 city councils of various parties (GFL, SP and EVP). Now contacts have been made between politicians and IT people so there will be more information campaigns going on in the next week to make the vision possible: The city of Bern is pioneering in IT education by introducing Linux and other Open Source Software on about 1000 school computers!

Yesterday, Patrice Neff gave his first Linux training day at the Diego Thomson teacher seminary in Lima. Though the Peruvian summer is very hot now, Patrice, Juan Ochante (congratulations to your new blog ;) and the teachers went for a couple hours into the dark computer room and learned about Skolelinux and many other things.

I love Linux on desktop! (although due to my technical inability I still sometimes curse my computer…) Anyway, desktoplinux.com has always interesting news. Two days ago, for example, the GNOME and KDE desktop environment development communities made peace by agreeing upon the Portland project. Also, on the news site I found the message of Macedonian schools installing Ubuntu on 5000 PCs. Hey, that’s progressive! I hope the Bernese government resp. people will also vote for Open Source Software on school computers when they discuss about the 8.5 million Swiss francs IT project for schools in the years 2007 until 2010. Unfortunately, the long discussion we had in the Linux User Group Bern about 645 new PCs for schools in Thun didn’t end up very successfully besides a meeting a month ago.

The Indian government is funding an initiative to distribute free CDs containing open-source software. Around 3.5 million CDs of Tamil-language versions of open-source applications and 3.5 million Hindi-language CDs containing have already been sent out. There are plans to distribute software translated into all 22 official languages of India.

Full article at CNET News.com

And speaking about ICT for developing countries:

The MIT Media Lab has launched a new research initiative to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world’s children. To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been created.

MIT Media Lab $100 Laptop Website