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Its funny how a thread on this mail list can challenge ones perception. First it seems that we have more members with connections in the education sector than I realised (so I will have to watch my awful spelling from now on ;-) ). Although no longer involved in the education sector either directly or indirectly (expect where my 5 year old son is involved) but never the less working the fringes unofficially, the recent talk about SIMS / CAPITA et all has stimulated the old grey matter and here are a few points 1. I haven't met anyone in education who has a good word for SIMS (so why do we still put up with it ?). Perhaps we all need something that we love to hate (but also hate to loose). 2. I have tried moodle (from the perspective of installing it on my home PC and tinkering from it) so I would be interested in hearing from anyone (off list if appropriate) who uses it day in day out. 3. Some time back I believe Simon (W) sent me the link to schooltool. As someone who is interested in any product that could be applied to in the education arena (for teaching or management) I have become a bit of a collector, and so I looked at this product at that time still much a work in progress. A quick trawl of the net just now has confirmed that the project is still alive and kicking and probably nearer a working product than it was then. Anyway if anyone is interested this is the link: http://www.schooltool.org/ Not having my own school to test it on I couldn't say if it meets the needs of school management better / worse than SIMS. And not forgetting that Capita also have it sown up at the other end with EMS for the local authorities (why have tie in when you can go for double tie in). So I don't know if its compatible with those needs from a data transfer point of view. 4. I would also be interested in knowing what products (FLOSS) if any are being used to support education within schools now and if anyone has plans for the future. Are ideas being pursued, implemented, tested and shared? For example I was wondering if there was value in using wiki's to assist in collaborative story writing, and possibly multi-media "production" (eg recording of audio renditions of completed works) ? I believe that wiki's (being organic and collaborative in nature) would be a good way of recording and documenting collaborative works. So ... has anyone tried this ? What are the gotchas ? How much preparation is required ? Although I believe there are several good bodies doing work into FLOSS in education, I'm not entirely sure that the focus is correct or indeed whether it should not be more devolved to local level forums (such as this) where cultural differences / requirements can be more easily catered for. Anyway this is just a few thoughts on the matter. Apologies to anyone who feels this is a little bit off topic. But if the theme for next Easter's meeting is to be FLOSS in Education, I think we should have some cards up our sleeves ! Especially if we are intending to invite non I.T literate teachers to come and give their input. Thanks for your attention Tom. GNU/Linux - The untaxed freedom to express myself digitally. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.