Just new to the list

[Hilaire Fernandes]

Hello Edubuntuers,

I have just subscribed to this mailing list and I think it could be nice
to present myself and the organization where I volunteer free time for
the promotion of free software in education.

I am volunteer and president at OFSET[1]. OFSET means "Orgnani[s|z]ation
 for Free Software in Education and Teaching". Our 1st objective is to
develop free software for education. As such we have written some
software you probably know as Gcompris[2], Dr.Geo[3] (written by
myself), COLLATINVS[4]. Both GCompris and DrGeo won awards in France in
2003[5] and 2000[6]. More recently DrGeo was also accredited by the
Italian INDIRE public institution[7]. If you look closely you will see
that both Gcompris and DrGeo are in the Gnome repository although we are
not really Gnome projects.

Writing quality, non-trivial, educational software with good
documentation is a very looong process. OFSET was set up to find
solution to get sustained development cycles for educational free
software. Until know we have not yet found an appropriate model to
improve the development cycles. Nevertheless we have been exploring way
to get fundings and supports (Bruno's Gcompris way to get financial
support out of its Windows port, partnership with UNESCO,...)

In 2002, we started with the freeduc-cd concept[8]. The idea was to
allow the teacher to have a direct exposure to the free education
software available under Gnu/Linux, without the need to get through the
installation process of a GNU/Linux. Although it is exactly not related
to developing free software for education, we found it necessary so we
can enlarge the free software exposure in the education area. And it was
 a great success as various Freeduc-cd versions were downloaded about
75000 times since 2002.

Thanks to Freeduc-cd, we were invited to join you at the Edubuntu
submit, but sadly we were a lot to join the RMLL/LSM meeting at this
same time in Djion, France. I contacted one of our member in UK, but he
was not free either to join you and represent us.
As a side note, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed we were
contacted to join the meeting because of freeduc-cd and not because the
free software we are writing. A freeduc-cd alike project can just be a
one month effort, which is nothing comparing to the years of effort
necessary to the Gcompris or Dr.Geo developments (code, documentation,
translation).
While working in Freeduc-cd, we had to prepare packages for several
applications. Our repository is at http://debian.ofset.org/dists, it
could be useful for you to select applications not yet in Debian.
Related to Freeduc-cd we had some documentation effort, but mainly in
French for now[9].
Style working in Freeduc-cd we recently wrote a web application[12] to
design on-line XFCE desktop menu profiles, we have used it  for the
Freeduc-games[10] and freeduc-primary[11]. This web application is
linked to a repository of packages and a repository of documentation to
automatically (semi-) build a freeduc-cd with contextual documentations.
If you are interested I can said a bit more about these application.

My greatest wish is that Edubuntu could make a major shift in how is
perceived free software in education. In particularly in the political
sphere. Given the success of Ubuntu we can have good hope. In the other
hand I also hope Edubuntu can cooperate closely with Debian-Edu.

Best regards,


Hilaire Fernandes



[1] http://www.ofset.org
[2] http://www.gcompris.net
[3] http://www.ofset.org/drgeo
[4] http://www.ofset.org/collatinus
[5] http://gcompris.free.fr/article.php3?id_article=33
[6] http://www.aful.org/presse/cp-concours.html
[7] http://www.ofset.org/articles/131
[8] http://www.ofset.org/freeduc-cd
[9] http://documentation.ofset.org/freeduc/primaire-1.5/fr/book.html
[10] http://www.ofset.org/freeduc-games
[11] http://www.ofset.org/freeduc-ecole
[12] http://linux5.cc.ntu.edu.tw:8080/seaside/freeduc

-- 
http://www.ofset.org/petition
Pétition de soutien au développement
de logiciels libres pour l'éducation.