Open Source FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) in Education http://eduforge.org/wiki/wiki/eduforge/Systems%2C%20Tools%20and%20Repositories FOSS Helpdesk Project http://eduforge.org/projects/helpdesk/ Open Learning Suite The objective of the OLS project is to develop a software system that will allow open source applications to communicate with each other and deliver different configurations of learning environments that are superior to those offered by WebCT and BlackBoard. OLS will mix-and-match functionality of applications that deliver narrow services (e.g., wiki, user rating tool, bulleting board, instant messaging) and functionality of modules of large systems (e.g., course management systems, learning content management systems) to deliver learning environments. OLS will use the XML Web services platform to: Integrate open source applications. Open source applications will work together regardless of how they were implemented. Expose useful functionality to Web users. SOAP will be the Web protocol used to do this. Describe application interfaces. The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) document will be used to do this. Register applications and allow users to discover them. The Universal Discovery Description and Integration (UDDI) will be used to do this. The OLS project started in July 2004 and the above is taken from the draft charter. It is a very exciting project. Open Source is truly coming of age. A visit to the forum is highly recommended ... http://eduforge.org/projects/ols New Zealand Open Source VLE Project This project is adopting and developing open source elearning software for deployment throughout New Zealand’s education sector. The project team (with 38 members) reviewed existing LMS strengths and points of interest and decided that Moodle has the closest alignment with what the NZ Open Source VLE project is trying to achieve - "Establishing a flexible technical architecture appropriate for a dynamic environment, in which individual application components use open standards and are independent, modular and extendable." Again, there is some terrific discussion and highly recommended to anyone interested in alternative approaches to proprietary systems. http://eduforge.org/projects/nzvle WebQuest http://webquest.sdsu.edu/ Quiz Game Master http://cybil.tafe.tas.edu.au/~capsticm/quizman/qmhome.html Study Mate http://www.respondus.com/studymate/index.shtml Flash Learning Games http://flashgames.umn.edu/ From EduForge FOSS forum: Collection Workflow Integration System (CWIS) is a turnkey web-based software package designed to allow groups with collections of information to share that information with others via the World Wide Web and integrate that information into the National Science Digital Library (NSDL). It is software to assemble, organize, and share collections of data about resources, like Yahoo or Google Directory but conforming to international and academic standards for metadata. CWIS was specifically created to help build collections of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) resources and connect them into NSF's National Science Digital Library, but can be (and is being) used for a wide variety of other purposes. http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/CWIS/ Plone Plone is a content management system that is built on the powerful and free Zope Application server. It is a content management framework written in Python. It is available in 20 languages and can manage multilingual content. Also it is extensible and can be used for larger organizations. http://plone.org/ Web Wiz Forums Web Wiz Forums is a free, feature rich ASP based bulletin board system software. By using this, one can build and manage an interactive community. Security features allows you to login and send/receive the messages to any particular group or all based on the access rights. http://www.webwizguide.info/web_wiz_forums/default.asp?mode=asp Drupal Drupal is an open-source platform and content management system for building dynamic web sites offering a broad range of features and services including user administration, publishing workflow, discussion capabilities, news aggregation, metadata functionalities using controlled vocabularies and XML publishing for content sharing purposes. Equipped with a powerful blend of features and configurability, Drupal can support a diverse range of web projects ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven sites. By enabling and configuring individual modules, an administrator can design a unique site, one which can be used for a combination of knowledge management, web publishing and community interaction purposes. http://www.drupal.org/ PROPS PROPS is an open, extensible Internet publishing system designed specifically for periodicals such as newspapers and magazines who want to publish online, either exclusively or as an extension of their print publication. One can schedule the day of publishing after uploading and it will be published on the scheduled date. http://props.sourceforge.net/ JetBox One JetBox one is a Content Management System with workflow support incorporating a mailing list, site statistics, search engine, document management and user registration. It has a role based user right system where the different roles and rights are defined for System Administrator, Administrator, Editor and Author. The system may have any number of users and a user can save the article for personal use so that no other users can see that item. The item can be submitted for approval by Editor or Administrator and in this process, it can't be changed by author. An article can be archived and then it will not be shown on the website or it can be removed physically also. Meta Information can also be associated along with the item to fill out keywords, description and Robot Information. This extra information is specifically for search engines and is stored in the background of the page so search engines have extra information about the displayed item. Jetbox CMS has many handy features for fast implementation and reduction of website maintenance costs. http://jetboxone.sourceforge.net/index.php Repository in a Box RIB is a software package for creating WWW metadata repositories and archiving related data files. Metadata is information that describes reusable objects, such as software. RIB allows the user to enter metadata into a user friendly java applet which then sends the information to a RIB server via HTTP. The information is then stored in an SQL database where it is automatically made available in a fully functional web site (catalog, search page, etc). Repositories which use similar data models can use the XML processing capabilities of RIB to share information via the Internet. http://icl.cs.utk.edu/rib/