It is based on Debian and uses XFCE as the desktop. It is incredibly unattractive to me but than I'm not a subject matter expert. OFST collaboartes at a european level and layed out the foundation for building a repository of FOSS software to be used by students and teachers, and in some cases OFST members are involved in development or support for selected projects such as:
Dr. Genius
Interactive geometry coupled with a scientific calculatorDr. GeniusDr. Geo
Interactive geometryGCompris
Ludo-educative for the youngsGPeriodic
Periodic table browserjust as an example. and hopefully a reference point.
In any case it is a member of SchoolForge.net which hosts many other similiar projects. See more:: http://www.schoolforge.net/members.php
btw The "Minhal Le'Mada ve Technologia" is a partner in SchoolNet, and might be a good starting point. see: http://www.education.gov.il/scitech/odot1.htm
Still, with israel beeing a member of SchoolNet Europe, an NGO dedicated to promotion of ICT in education, this could be an interesting link, though not specificaly related to FOSS. There should be more formal and professional channles to communicate directly with people in the education system that can help. Shachar commented here on some proposal the ministry is waiting for, , sugesting the lack of the Ha'Makor ability to respond as a "no-go for FOSS in the education system". I hope this is not realy what he means by "" we won't be able to ask for anything" as it seems somewhat rediculous to think that there is some correlation between the cause of FOSS and specific competancies of individuals in Hamkor or elsewhere. Would you care to elaborate on that? and/or post some information on what is required?
p.s.
I find it tidious to have this discussion in English. Would any one care to follow this up on Kenert's forum? dittigas
On 2003.06.04 18:06, Beni Cherniavsky wrote:
Thinking about promotion of FS/OS in schools, I got an idea. As far as I see, FS/OS programs can be specifically useful for schools either accidentally (because the technology happens to be convenient in school settings, e.g. LTSP) or by guessing that a specific thing would be nice and writing it (e.g. DrGenius). In the first case the software is created for other reasongs and usability for education is a free bonus. In the later case, there is a deliberate investment of time to create something attractive to schools but judging by current situation these are mostly shots in the dark.
So, since there *is* a motivation among hackers to provide schools with free software that would benefit them, why won't the schools tell us what they want? I'm thinking along the lines of some site where schools/teachers can post "wanted" requests describing what they want.
Perhaps HaMakor could convince the ministry of education to create such a thing. It could be presented from the "enraged tax-payer" point of view: we eventually pay for the commercial software purchased by schools, we have good reasons to believe it could be spent better and some of us are ready to contribute time to create missing pieces. What we request is to tell us what software schools currently use and pay for and what new investments are planned. This would be in line with the wide practice of spending state money by a competition between companies for the task; it's just an extension of it into a world were individual volunteers have a lot to offer too.
It could take the form of some official policy from the MoE encouraging schools and teachers to openly post their requirements for software. As for the process itself, it should be as direct as possible, avoiding any beurocracy. Perhaps it would be enough to simply post such info on an existing site (Whatsup?).
And of course all this is not limited to education but that seems a particularly important niche.
-- Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Three Laws of Copy-Protechnics: http://www.technion.ac.il/~cben/threelaws.html
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