I heard a phrase today that reminded me of my childhood: “...learning and sharing together”. I’m not sure if I ever heard this exact phrase, but it was definitely a theme that was central to my early education; it’s now a central theme of my life again, this time through free software.

A milestone for education on Free Software and Open Standards has been reached. On September 5th 2007 the beta version of the SELF Platform goes live. The official launch is taking place during a conference on Free Software in Education in the Netherlands, accompanied by satellite launch events in Sweden, Bulgaria, Argentina, Mexico and India with workshops and conferences.

In a press release from the Icelandic Ministry of Education the ministry explains it is working with the free software community to put free software into Icelandic schools. Two main reasons are given. Firstly, the Ministry’s agenda is to increase knowledge and competence among students in IT related subjects (using free software). Secondly, the ministry wants to cut costs.

Teemu Leinonen asks some important questions about the Open Education Conference, OpenEd 2009.
1) Why is the title “open education” and not “free and open education” or “libre education”?
2) Why there aren’t any talks/presentations about language learning?

The Kamloops/Thompson School District in British Columbia, Canada, is a free software success story. Gregg Ferrie, manager of information technology for the district, believes its infrastructure may be the largest Linux on-the-desktop implementation in Western Canada in public education.

This letter was sent to the Minister of education to point out aberrations between its stated policy and implementation in the e-governance initiatives of the education department.

The promiscuous UK education sector is selling out to Microsoft (again) under bizarre circumstances

"Last Friday, 24th of April, the foundations for vendor independent ICT education in the Netherlands were laid down.

"...The following text has been crossposted from Stephen Downes: The Future of Education, liveblogged notes taken at the conference by Stephen Downes at the First International Conference Free Knowledge, Free Technology - Education for a free information society [...] The conference deals first with the concept of public goods and public education, and their relationship with Freedom.