GNU Generation is a new project sponsored by the Free Software Foundation to involve high school age pre-university students (approximately ages 13-18) in free software.

"While GNU Generation isn't the next Google Highly Open Participation Contest™ (GHOP), the two efforts have a lot in common. My name is Max Shinn and I am going into my junior year of high school. This summer, though, I'm interning with the Free Software Foundation (FSF). When I was participating in GHOP, I never imagined that I would be using that experience to start a similar project.

Lake City, Florida USA is the home of a rather unconventional school, New Generation. It is a non-profit, private school for students grade 6th through 12th that are at risk of dropping out of school due to educational difficulties. With a maximum population of 60 students, New Generation has an astounding success rate amongst a category of students that most of society has given up on.

T@SCHOOL project offers exclusively free software based support for primary education in kerala.This time,Director of Public instruction has decided to conduct SSLC(secondary school leaving certificate-the basic requirement for higher studies in INDIA) IT practical examination for this year from 27th February to 7th March 2008. It is first time , conducting IT practical examination for complete students in the free software – IT@School GNU/Linux. IT@School project and Pareekshabhavan has entrusted to conduct the examination for more than 4.7 lakh students throughout the schools of Kerala, Lakshadeep and Gulf countries. IT@school admins are preparing to apply for guiness as they have the largest number of student attending an exam based on exclusive free software based softwares:)

"...Teaching the students to use free software, and to participate in the free software community, is a hands-on civics lesson. It also teaches students the role model of public service rather than that of tycoons. All levels of school should use free software." -- via edte.ch http://edte.ch/2008/01/13/why-schools-should-exclusively-use-free-software/

After many successful months of GNU Generation, GNU Generation 2.0 was officially announced at LibrePlanet 2010. This builds upon the original GNU Generation by lowering the entry barrier to free software contribution, and making the program more extensible. So what is new? Let's see...

The Free Software Foundation has started a community for young people interested in contributing to free software. The GNU Generation community is aimed at people between the ages of 13 and 18 and encourages them to participate in the development of free software.

A course set up by a Junior High public school in Monza, Northern Italy, involves students who find difficult to focus on theoretical, talk-only lessons by teaching them how to build their own computer and install Ubuntu on it. A few participants went back to Windows after the course, but the majority liked Ubuntu so much to stick to it.

"...Free Software is really something to get excited about. Through the community created by GNU Generation, hopefully that excitement will persevere through the years to come. Unfortunately, it will take more than just a small little campaign to make this happen. It will take the cooperation of all Free Software users, developers, and advocates to really get the message across.