[LINK] Free Open Source Software for Australian Schools

[Tom Worthington]

I wrote 12 Jan 2011 09:36:29 +1100 (was: "re: Broadband for a Broad Land"):

 >... SIF Implementation Specification (Australia) ...

Further thought:

Previous attempts at fully integrated IT systems for education have 
proved problematic in Australia. The SIF Newsletter indicates that 
progress has been made with a SIF Pilot in Western Australia developing 
an open source "agent development framework" to be reused across 
Australia <http://www.sifinfo.org/upload/story/DC43FZ_Pilot%201-2%20WA.pdf>.

A useful approach might be to apply the technology and development 
philosophy which Richard Volpato has applied at the Copyright Agency 
Limited:
<http://richard.volpato.net/2011/01/10/architecture-of-statistically-powered-web-sites/>. 


With this approach a set of open source tools would be used to build a 
system which allows resource intensive processing to not be done in real 
time and which allows end users to customise reports.

Rather than just producing a set of standards, with Australian schools 
then need to purchase overseas developed software in order to comply 
with, the Australian government could fund the development of free open 
source software which implements the standards and can be used for free
by Austrlaian schools. This approach was used successfully by the New 
Zealand government's Tertiary Education Commission's e-learning 
Collaborative Development Fund (eCDF), to develop the Mahara ePortfolio 
software for use by NZ schools (and now used in Australia):
<http://mahara.org/about>.

If New Zealand can develop software for its schools, it seems reasonable 
Australia can do the same.

More at:
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/01/systems-interoperability-framework-for.html>


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra