On the weekend I ran a short training session for teachers about Ubuntu. It was a lot of fun, and surprisingly most of the teachers had never played with Ubuntu before. Usually at these kinds of events, the people who turn up to the Linux/Ubuntu session are the hard core converted, so that was lovely!
We spoke about a lot of stuff, but unfortunately, even though I mentioned the need to be online, the people running the day hadn’t put two and two together (booting from a livecd and asking to be online) and they didn’t know their proxy details to get online, so the session was slightly less interactive than I would have liked. I wanted to have the online Ubuntu repository available so we could install and play with ome specific applications. Anyway, below are some useful links for the people who attended, and for anyone else interested.
The meaning of “Ubuntu”:
Ubuntu is an African word meaning ‘Humanity to others’, or ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.
Information about Ubuntu:
- Get Ubuntu from here. They will either ship you a CD or you can download it.
- Information about Ubuntu
- How to get involved in the Ubuntu community
- Support options for Ubuntu - make sure you check out the community forums for questions or issues you may have
- User guide to Ubuntu - click through Take the Tour on http://www.ubuntu.com
- DVD/MP3 and other restricted format support - use this guide
- Useful Ubuntu derivatives - Medibuntu (multimedia focused) and Edubuntu (education focused). You can either use one of the derivatives as is, or look through what packages athey include and install them in your default Ubuntu installation.
- Available Ubuntu training options
Information about Open Source generally:
- What is Open Source - some great answers are on the following websites:
- Linux Australia information page
- Make the Move - useful information about Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
- About Software Freedom - why software freedom is so important
- Top 10 FOSS for education - My top 10 areas in education from a presentation I gave about 4 months ago that was quite useful.
- Blogging for education - one of my blog posts that may be of interest
- Catalog of Free and Open Source Software for Education - an excellent list of FOSS education applications
- Open Source alternatives to proprietary software - a great resource to find alternative Open Source options
- My favourite Open Source applications by Mark Richardson, an Australian educator
- Moodleman blog - great for people interested in Moodle
- Australian Service for Knowledge of Open Source Software - focused on Open Source for higher education, but has loads of general information of use. Includes a page specifically about Open Source in education with loads of papers and research including the school sector
- Open Source industry and community survey - has a section specifically on education, and highlights why education about open source tools at school would really help the industry
Make sure you join the edulists open source mailing list to connect with other teachers using and talking about Open Source in education. Join the list and introduce yourself 
Have fun everyone! If you have additional links that would be helpful, please add them to the comments.
