LibreOffice For Schools

[timothy.m.butterwort]

Is anyone interested in creating a LibreOffice for Education Text Book project?

This can and probably should be setup as its own working group.

The California Open Source Textbook Project http://www.opensourcetext.org/
Is currently seeking Open Source Text Books for The California Public Schools
K-12. They require the material to be presented in a Text Book style. This
would be a good way to get LibreOffice into Word Processing Classes in
California High Schools as well as schools around the world.

College Open Text Book http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/ Is also seeking
Text Books for use in Colleges, This would be a good opportunity to get
LibreOffice into College's across the US!

Open Text Book Library is another College Initiative
http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/ as well.

There are quite a few more of these organizations that partnerships could be
established with as well.

I have been seeing a number for these popping up and I have seen some that
will pay $20,000 USD for Creative Commons Text Book Donations late last year
which could be used to help fund the this working group. Community developed
software with educational community developed Course-ware would work out
pretty well.

These initiatives would require producing a full text book with exercises etc.

As The LibreOffice Software already has an unbeatable low cost all we are
missing to take over the education sector is unbeatable low cost course-ware
to go with it.

Establishing a full LibreOffice For Education program with the goals of not only
producing the text books but also full courses and possibly Moodle course
ware, Produced courses could even potentially be made available at edX
https://www.edx.org/ (Which has a Free Into To Linux Course this year for
those who have not registered for it yet.) It is a $2,400 course normally
taught by The Linux Foundation.

Tim

[Antanas_Budriunas]

The subject is indeed very important and TDF should pay serious
attention toward this.
Situation in many countries are heavely influenced by MS lobbyists.
Fortunately the K-12 curriculum in Lithuania's state education system
is open to software alternatives. I know personally few teachers
(including myself) which has choosen LibreOffice as an office
applications teaching base.
10 years ago even a paper text book was published in Lithuania
containing explanations and examples with MS Office and OpenOffice in
parallel. Now sadly it is in significant part outdated and currently
we have no full range replacement.
The situation could be comparable in other European countries and
maybe wider in the world.

Such thoughts so far.

Antanas Budriūnas

[Webmaster_for_Lungst]

We need these LO school books.

We get the kids while they are young and then they grow up and use LO as they "grow", in school and out of school.

To be honest, if LO does not do this, do you want to bet that AOO might not as well? We need to stay ahead of the market in this respect and see what is needed to rewrite the chapters of the "Getting Started Guide" and make them work for the educational environment, with activities and such, plus some testing after each chapter. Then have a "teacher's guide" with more samples of tests and such that would be helpful to a teacher, or a parent.

I worked as a substitute teacher for a few years and I know that it can be hard to "get ideas" for activities and tests for a teacher that does not know the subject "well". I had to do that for a little less than two months in the first every Forensics course a high school [10-12th grades] tried in my area when their teacher was late or even "hung over" too many mornings over the first 3 weeks of class. There were nothing to help, mostly. No activities to do in class and almost no real test questions in the whole book that would work for this level of students.

So we need to make enough helpful materials for a teacher and the students as we can make and be a part of an "electronic" copy of a book - i.e. PDF file. Maybe have larger format documents and "things" in a "education" web site for learning LO as the core of the information. Things that would help the students, teachers, and parents. Yes, parents since I know many home school kids with some relatives included.

[chris_wot]

What existing texts can we use to base this on? I was sent some links to open textbooks the other day...

Chris

[Webmaster_for_Lungst]

We have the current "Getting Started Guide". Take that and expand it to make it look/feel more like a text book. There has to be some textbook-like books in you local [larger] book store you can browse through. I know I saw some a few years ago for MSO that gave examples and questions and answers after each chapter.

All of our guides - the Math one as well - could be expanded to look more like a text book. It would take some time and effort, but starting with the "getting started" and "Math" guides would be a start.

I wish I had the time to try my hand at it. Maybe later.