WikiEducator talk:Libre Software
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| Thread title | Replies | Last modified |
|---|---|---|
| Ideas/comments to improve? | 0 | 11:03, 29 June 2012 |
| Other experiences with 100% Free/Libre Software in education | 0 | 00:02, 24 November 2011 |
| Mention? | 0 | 01:14, 21 November 2011 |
| PDF viewers | 0 | 22:12, 17 November 2011 |
First of all I must applaud Kim for this very instructive page about the reasons for using Libre Software in education, and also the struggle of an educational project like WikiEducator to adopt them for the full 100%.
Here I would like to share the same struggle we have experienced at the Free Technology Academy, which also embraces the four freedoms applied to both software and educational materials, and for standards for that matter (see about FTA). Indeed for the course books all are under Free Cultural Works accepted licenses, and the complete software stack to run the online campus, community portal, peer review tools etc are all under Free Software licenses. The trouble is, as you have recognised, with video formats in particular. What we have done in the FTA is produce several Guest Lecture videos. We have published them in Ogg Theora, see for example the lecture by Jon 'maddog' Hall. Apart from providing download options, we also embedded an itheora video player in the webpage, which works with most browsers, either with several options for multimedia plugins that many browsers already have, or with Java. In the embedded player (top right) are options provided for that. So the options are there, but it does cost some effort to present your videos like this. Maybe we need to work on awareness and video editor skills in this direction? In any case, keep up the good work at WE!
- Freedom to adapt: convert to a mobile format
- In some cases there may be libre software available that can work with non-free formats. The free/libre and open source software communities work hard to produce software which works with non-free file formats. Examples include Libre Office which generally uses the Open Document Formats but can handle others, Gnash and Lightspark can play some Flash files.
- Educators should educate about general principles with examples and not train students in the use of one commercial product.
