Russian Schools Standardize on Open Source Software

The Russian Federation Ministry of Education announced that all Russian school computers will be configured with open source software within one year. If individual schools wish to use commercial software, they will have to purchase it themselves. This dramatic announcement was precipitated when the principal of a Russian school was charged with software piracy after unauthorized copies of Windows were found in his school. If convicted, he would likely have been sentenced to hard labor in a Siberian work camp. Former President Gorbachev appealed to Bill Gates, and then-President Putin declared that a Russian educator would never again be threatened by commercial vs. education conflict. Read a brief article here. This is the largest school system to move to all open source software. They did so after several successful pilot projects. This suggests that it may be a reasonable option for other schools or nations.

Study from Princeton and Lehigh University Researchers Expose Voting Machine Weakness

A slashdot article informs us of a well-researched study from Princeton and Lehigh Universities that exposes many weaknesses in a popular brand of electronic voting machine. Rather than applaud their efforts to strengthen voting security, industry and government officials have attempted to supress their findings. It's an issue that affects entire nations deeply from those that have done it well (Brazil) to those that have done a sadly inadequate job (USA). The article contains several links, including a video showing the evidence of serious security flaws.

Tutoring with Creativity and Caring to Change Children's Chances

Pulitzer Prize nominee Dave Eggers was recently honored with the coveted 2008 TED prize. Watch his 24-minute presentation, Once Upon A School, about a successful model for a tutoring center that has changed the lives of thousands of kids and is spreading from city to city. Be ready for a story that includes pirates and time travel! If you care about kids, you'll want to see this! Click here to learn more about Eggers.

Senate Passes Bill to Reduce School Internet Filtering

The long-running debate about it, how, and when to protect school children from inappropriate Internet content and contacts has taken a new turn. The Senate has passes a bill that emphasizes educating students about the safe use of Internet services such as social networking and chat rooms rather than just attempting to restrict access to these potentially valuable sites. Students would also learn about cyberbullying under the legislation. The legislation was supported by ISTE and CoSN, and you can learn more about it in this ISTE article.

$100 Laptop Piloted in New York City Schools

In a New York Sun article, a pilot project is described in which students in two urban elementary schools will receive the same low-cost XO laptop designed for 3rd world children. While it's not an "in depth" description of the project, the school system's IT Director is interviewed, and several points of view are presented. One goal of the project is to make the laptops available to other city principals to order for their students. A study will be conducted to explore the effect of the pilot. A similar project in underway in Birmingham, Alabama, in which 15,000 XO laptops are being given to all students in grades 1 through 8. Birmingham completed a successful pilot last year.

eBook Readers proliferate and advance

Amazon is ready to release the second version of its Kindle ebook reader, ebook software for the iPhone rivals Kindle in popularity, and Sony has released at least the third version of its reader. The OLPC XO computer's ebook reader is in use by nearly a million children around the world. Imagine an ebook reader that costs less than $100, weighs less than a pound, and can access all of the textbooks used during 12 years of school. Do you know about e-ink technology and pace of innovation of e-book readers? Check out these links to see how far we've come and some new designs that will be ready in 2009 and 2010: Evolution of e-Books (slide show at Forbes.com), Future of E-Books (Forbes.com article), Amazon Kindle 2 (article and photo), More Kindle 2 photos, Second Generation XO from OLPC .. eBook reader for 75$,

Major Open Source Validation in Court Case

Until now there have been few legal tests of Open Source licensing and the legal principles on which they are based. Sites like Wikipedia, services like Creative Commons, open courseware such as that at MIT, and software like Linux all rely on a web of previously untested legal licenses to protect them and their content. The court ruled that exceeding the terms of a license, including an open source license, unleashes the full protection of copyright law. Read the short announcement (and great commentary) at Slashdot. Read the full story in this October 3, 2008, Datamation article.