The internet is revolutionizing how we learn. It's exciting. And it's
only the beginning. Mozilla's Learning, Freedom and the Web Festival
will gather teachers, learners and technologists from around the world
who are at the heart of this revolution.
http://www.drumbeat.org/festival
Taking place Barcelona from November 3-5, we're planning three days of
making, teaching, hacking, inventing and shaping the future of
education and the web. We want you to be a part of it:
http://www.drumbeat.org/festival/register
Whether your a teacher or a technologist, this is your chance to help
shape the future of learning *and* the web. We hope to see you in
Barcelona.
Forward this email to a friend:
http://us1.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=603ab0aa30ca5d93fe51300d4&id=55d…
--
GN
The declaration adopted at the National Conference on Free Software and
Education in Kozhikode during September 10-12 is available at
http://wiki.hipatia.net/index.php/DeclarationEduconf2010 for anyone to
read and sign. If you wish to sign the declaration, you need to login
there. This is made so to prevent spamming. You can login with the
username fsedu and the password freeme and click on the Edit tab to add
your name.
Best
Sasi
--
V. Sasi Kumar
Free Software Foundation of India
http://swatantryam.blogspot.com
Resp. Sir/Madame,
I have been using the services of 'Prism net cafe' for the past six
months or so. Since my desktop broke down. On 16th September, 2010
Pune Newsline carried a news item detailing how many unlicensed
cybercafes are running in the city.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/police-chief-talks-tough-heat-on-unlicens…
. Yesterday evening i.e. the 17th of September, 2010 i went to the
above-mentioned cybercafe. They asked to have a scan of the identity
proof. While I gave the relevant details and they were duly scanned.
While I do understand and appreciate the work being done by the Pune
Cyber Cell targeting terrorist/anti-social elements at large I am also
concerned with the possibility of misuse of such information by
unscrupulous individuals working in and around Cybercafes. I am sure
you are aware of how common individuals/people's names and cell
numbers are harvested routinely and sold for spamming/cold calling
etc. While most of these are a nuisance rather than anything else,
getting access to scanned identity information could have more issues.
Possibility of cases of identity theft (couple or more which have
already happened in India) may see a rise. how does Pune Police hope
to secure the common public from such issues? While I have played out
the State's predicament as well in my blog post http://wp.me/po8ay-1Y
alongwith a copy of this letter I would appreciate a reply on the
same. I have few poignant questions on the matter mentioned above as
well :-
1. What if any new conditions are being made by Pune police for
identity proof ? I looked for answers on the Pune Police website
http://www.punepolice.gov.in/message_com.html and was none the wiser.
2. If a scanned picture of an individual along with relevant details
are taken how is the police going to stop/save us from any possible
misuse of our identity/information ?
3. If instructions have been issued/given to scan pictures for id
proof, aren't they supposed to display those instructions on the
display board.
The above mentioned cybercafe is located off J.M.Road near Mamta
Sweets. My cell number is 091-976-333-0874 . If people want to forward
the mail to other socially relevant groups, please do so minus my
contact no.
A concerned citizen
--
Regards,
Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल
My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com
065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17
==This is a Draft Declaration==
We request all those who read this to suggest any changes before
Monday 13th September 2010, so that the declaration can be released
sooner than later.
==The Role of ICT and Education in Social Inclusion==
Information & Communication Technology (ICT) is one of the most powerful
technologies ever developed by humankind. It has drastically changed
the way we do things, the way we communicate and even the way we
think. Education is one of the spheres of human activity that is being
strongly influenced by ICT. While the teaching of ICT has been
incorporated at the school-level, ICT itself is being used in the
classroom and outside for teaching and learning more
effectively. However, access to ICT is not universal due to various
reasons, including obscurity and the high cost of proprietary software.
Education is a basic requirement for a comfortable life in
today's society. In view of this, some countries, including India,
have made it a fundamental right. This is certainly a move in the
right direction. Education in ICT and ICT-enabled education are also
becoming wide-spread. Part of the reason for this is the rapid decline
in the cost of hardware. At the same time, the high cost of software
is acting as a hurdle for further progress. Another factor that
prevents more wide-spread use of ICT is the fact that the interface is
not available in many languages, which bothers a lot of people.
Obscurity stops people and especially students to learn how things work,
software in particular. The right to use, know, change and share
technical knowledge
about modern artefacts is an essential human right in knowledge societies.
==Why Software Freedom is essential?==
Proprietary software does not allow community participation in shaping
the ICT to be used for education, and is not suitable for education
since their solutions treat students as consumers. Free software
community (sometimes called free and open source software community)
on the other hand produced GNU/Linux operating system and a
comprehensive stack of collaborative workspaces that enable students
during the last 25 years. Most of the free software workspaces are
made accessible for speakers of all languages of the world, including
physically challenged students. The software freedom granted to the
people (1. to use the software for any purpose; 2. to study how it
works; 3. to modify it and 4. to distribute the modified software) is
unquestionably the core source of the free software revolution that is
being witnessed. Any software that grants these four freedoms is
called Free Software. These freedoms are essential for students to
learn how things work, and to share their experience, knowledge and
collaborate with others without legal encumbrances.
The software freedom makes it eminently suitable for any purpose,
especially for education. The software used in education has to be
freely available and accessible to all because education has to be
universal. Moreover, the software has to be available in the language
used by the community in that part of the world, however small the
community may be. This is normally not possible with proprietary
software because some communities could be too small to satisfy the
commercial interests of the company.
But the situation is different with Free Software. Since the source
code is available for study and modification by anyone, students of
computer science and software engineering are able to see code written
by master programmers and learn from them, just as students of
literature learn from works of great writers, or students of art or
cinema learn from the works of great artists and movie makers. This is
obviously not possible with proprietary software.
Any community that has people with reasonable software skills can
customise the interface to show the menu and other items in their own
language. They can also create fonts for the language if they are not
available. And they can localise applications to suit their culture
and environment.
Finally, the students who have computers in their homes can use the
same software they use in their educational institutions without
either breaking the law and using illegal software, or spending a lot
of money to buy the same software.
Thus, Free Software is undeniably the most ideal for use in all
educational institutions at all levels; for primary, secondary or
higher education. Proprietary software keeps people divided and
helpless, while Free Software empowers them. Free software nurtures
the much needed creativity by encouraging us to critical thinking and
reasoning while proprietary software forces us to consume what they
package.
It is important for the graduating students to become entrepreneurs or
join the various agencies for employment. Considering this
requirement it is essential that the syllabus in educational
institutions focuses on skills and not include any specific branded
applications produced by a commercial company. Therefore, the
syllabus should be neutral and not mention any particular brand.
Just as the software requires to be free, it is essential that
learning and teaching resources including documentation, books,
journals, and other media should be released with a license (such as
Creative Commons by Share Alike) which grands similar freedoms for
other resources. All these resources must also be encoded in an open
standard so that the exchanged documents are decodable in all
platforms ensuring interoperability.
==Therefore==
considering all the reasons mentioned above, we, the undersigned, call
on all educational institutions, policy makers, students, teachers in
all corners of the world to discard all proprietary software and use
exclusively Free Software.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anivar Aravind <anivar.aravind(a)gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 11:56 AM
Subject: [fosscomm] Obituary to Our Friend & FOSS Activist Shyam Karanat
To: Fosscom Network <network(a)fosscom.in>
Dear All,
Our Friend, and member of This List Shyam Karanatt ended his life
himself yesterday afternoon. Still most of his friends are still
shocked and not recovered from the pain of this news.
Shyam was a very active Free Software advocate and Activist. I like
to recall his major contributions to Free Software Movement in India
He was known to me initially through Google Summer of Code candiate
for Swathanthra Malayalam Computing , for building the prototype for
Malayalam Speech Recognition system. and he started that with a
project named sharika based on CMU-SPINX library. He become an active
volunteer of Swathanthra Malayalam Computing and part of various other
LUGS like Swathanthra Software Users Group Malappuram, Foss Group in
MES, FSUG- Thrissur etc. He become the project admin for Translating
GNU.ORG webpages to Malayalam, and made a lot of progress with that
work . He involved with Organising Various FOSS programmes in his
college and varouos cities in Kerala .
Shyam initiated the Syllabus Review page in FCI Wikia
http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Syllabus_Review and compiled most of the
data, in association with Venkiy . Which become a major intervention
too later. He took a major role on realising the idea of GNU labs and
implimenting the first functioning GNU lab in MES kuttippuram
http://gnulabs.org/
Shyam was a good speaker in various FOSS conferences like FOSS.IN ,
Mukth.in etc and associate with Various FOSS Groups like IndLinux,
SMC, FSUG-Thrissur, FSUG-Calicut, SSUG Malappurm etc
His funeral is at Ramapuram, Pala, Kottayam District today
Shyam's Photo From Niyam's collection
http://www.flickr.com/photos/niyam/2399712870/
~ in the memory of a good friend
Anivar
--
"[It is not] possible to distinguish between 'numerical' and
'nonnumerical' algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from
other kinds of precise information." - Donald Knuth
_______________________________________________
network mailing list
network(a)lists.fosscom.in
http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
Hi,
RMS gave a short, unplanned talk on software freedom at the Indian
Statistical Institute today (2010-09-01) just before lunch. Students
and some faculty were present. Photos at:
http://images.kandalaya.org/gallery2/v/raju/rms-isid-20100901/
Regards,
-- Raj
--
Raj Mathur raju(a)kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/
GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F
PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves
Richard Stallman will be speaking in the inaugural session of the
National Conference on Free Software and Education in Kozhikode on
September 10, 2010. Giving the keynote address, he will speak on "Free
Software: Computing in Freedom". The conference will have speakers from
India like Prof. Nagarjuna and Prof. Kannan Moudgalya. There will also
be speakers from abroad like Marco Ciurcina (Professor of Law in Italy)
and Diego Saravia (Professor, UNSa-CONICET. Argentina) who will speak
through video conferencing.
Those who desire to participate, please register quickly. Travel support
available to a limited number of participants.
Conference site: http://c11.space-kerala.org/fsinedu
Best
--
Dr. V. Sasi Kumar
Society for the Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment
C-11, Elankom Gardens, Vellayambalam,
Thiruvananthapuram 695010, Kerala
Ph: 0471 2318997
Hi,
Richard Stallman (RMS) has left a small package weighing about 10KG at
my place that needs to be taken to Mumbai. Request you to contact me if
you're going Delhi-Mumbai in the next few days and can carry it with
you.
Thanks,
-- Raj
--
Raj Mathur raju(a)kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/
GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F
PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves
