Open EdTech Resources
I wish our children could grow up making their digital footprints in their own digital gardens. In the current system our children visit shopping malls run by the Big Tech companies whose business model is to find every way to maximise profit from their “users”.
This is my list of Open EdTech resources that I see as helpful toward my goals.
Education Technology here includes a wide range of technology used in education, including school information systems management, communication with parents, and delivery of teaching, and the devices used by teachers and pupils. The curriculum of IT lessons is adjacent and has some overlap.
Open Education Technology is based on open principles including open standards, open data, open source software, and open models of development, procurement and business.
This page lists resources relating to Open EdTech advocacy, development, news, etc.
The focus here is on general adoption of education technology, rather than specific pieces of software or specific functions. Specific instances may be included as examples. The focus may be biased to the UK, although most of the issues involved are international.
Open EdTech Advocacy, Campaigns, Petitions
- [Dutch based] Coalition Fair Digital Education (CEDO/CFDE) — “to realise a fair digital education system based on free software”:
#CEDO-EU:matrix.orgmatrix chat |@CEDO@mastodon.nlon Mastodon/fediverse- petition Free children from the digital stranglehold | manifesto (PDF) “for a different policy in the Netherlands for the digital, online aspects of education”; Belgian/French at educode.be; French at Halte au contrôle numérique
- presentation at MCH2022
- ISOC.nl Working Group announced
- FSFE on education (search) — Free Software Foundation Europe's campaigns and resources on free software in education
- GNU: Why Educational Institutions Should Use and Teach Free Software — old and still relevant manifesto
- Privacy International: EdTech needs Schooling — recorded talk — EdTech is specialism of PI campaigns mgr Kaitlyn
- [German] Teckids, SchulFrei — teaching kids real FOSS; Matrix; related to AlekSIS
- Human Rights Watch campaign: “How Dare They Peep into My Private Life?” — “Students Not Products” — Children’s Rights Violations by Governments That Endorsed Online Learning During the Covid-19 Pandemic
- Lernen wie die Profis [Swiss/German] a Zürich based campaign group of FSFE, includes a list of FOSS useful for schools
- [German] Schools section at digitalcourage.de — including Network for Free School Software — with slogans, graphics, introductory resources on these issues, aimed at children, parents, teachers.
Open EdTech Development: Software Platforms
“Platform” here means, loosely, a software and/or service designed to have multiple different functionalities plugged in to it.
Big, established platforms:
- Moodle (mainly for teaching/learning)
- Nextcloud (mainly for “office” applications)
- Big Blue Button (mainly for “live” video-conference teaching)
- Odoo (mainly for business management applications)
Upcoming and interesting platforms:
- Open EdTech — “designing a global Next-Gen educational platform that is 100% free and open source”, a new organisation started by Moodle CEO Martin Dougiamas
- [German] dBildungscloud and predecessor HPI School Cloud — “over a million students”
- [German] SchulNetzConzept (interview) — based around Nextcloud — “Several hundred thousand students”
- AlekSIS, the Free School Information System (at FOSDEM 2022, code) — related to Schul-Frei, TecKids
- OERu technology / OERu-tools — FOSS systems for delivery of Open Educational Resources
- XNET in Spain; especially their DD: a tool for the Democratic Digitalisation of Education
- Unsere digitale Schule [German] and description in English
Open EdTech Development: Applications
- [German] HermannPost — adapted Matrix server and Fluffychat app for their school's needs
- [Swedish] Öppna skolplattformen FOSS app replacement for official school app (code, witter)
- [USA] A school wellbeing communication app — “student communication with school therapists and coaches” (Matrix-based, in development, no public info AFAIK)
Open EdTech in the News
News collections. (And perhaps, exceptionally, some individual articles.)
- Privacy International: EdTech: Surveillance Tracker
- Sphere Transgression Watch
Why it matters: what's wrong with giving Them our (children's) data?
- Popular K-12 Tool Edmodo Shuts Down — includes what can happen to the data when a company shuts down.
EdTech and Government
Related Articles
- My mid-2023 article, Codename Ed: for a wholesome future aligned with educational values
#openEdTech #EdTech #awesomeFOSS #degoogled #campaign #outreach
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