FSFE joins April in disagreement on Microsoft education agreement
03 December 2015
Free Software in Education
We actively promote the use of Free Software in schools and universities as it encourages schooling of understanding over product training and upholds the scientific principle.
Already during its first general assembly, FSFE identified education as one of the most important areas for activity so young people and students would have the chance of getting in touch with knowledge instead of mere product schooling. Therefore the FSFE started a Free Software in Education working group to focus on these efforts. Today, it acts as a hub and works on monitoring the European situation. We participate in Free Software events and assist other initiatives in making the change possible.
Amongst other arguments for Free Software, here are four of the key benefits for education:
- Sharing: Using free software allows schools to teach children to share and cooperate.
- Learning to program: The possibility/freedom to tinker motivates children to learn more.
- Easy to administer: Free Software is stable, secure and reliable. It offers unrestricted access to the source code, thus allowing to modify or adapt it to the schools' needs.
- Licences: With Free Software, teachers can give a copy to each student. There is no risk to mislead any child to use an illegal copy.
News
Position paper for the boost of Open Educational Resources on the basis of Free Software
10 February 2015
Together with FSFE and other partners, the Bündnis Freie Bildung ("Free Education Alliance") today publishes its position paper about the creation and usage of Open Educational Resources (OER). Therein, the Bündnis demands a consequent publishing of all OER-material under public licences and their availability as Free Software and in Open Standard formats.
Open Letter to Prime Minister Erdoğan
20 June 2013
Days before the protests in Taksim Square erupted, President Erdoğan was in America. On behalf of an ambitious education investment project called FATIH, he toured Silicon Valley as the guest of America's largest technology companies, each of whom are hoping to land a contract for more than 10 million new tablet computers.
