Free Software in Open Food Network (OFN) and Education
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How open source is addressing food sovereignty
Our food system is broken. As with so many systems of the 21st century, power is concentrated in the hands of very few companies, often geared toward exploiting people and the planet, under the premise of maximizing profit. Under such a mindset, feeding people is a secondary goal. When it comes to something as important as food, we can and should aim for more than this as a society. What if the goal became getting high-quality, nutritious, and ecologically regenerative produce from farms to plates of every person in the world?
We believe getting food to everyone is not a radical concept. But getting there requires radical thinking. It requires putting the people most involved in the food system (producers, eaters, and communities) at the heart of the food system. It means putting collaboration above intellectual property. It means creating a commonwealth of knowledge and resources. This is the approach we are taking at the Open Food Network (OFN).
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BigBlueButton provides access to quality education through Open Source - Voices of Open Source
BigBlueButton is an Open Source virtual classroom started in 2007 by OSI sponsor, Blindside Networks. What differentiates BigBlueButton from other web conferencing platforms is that it’s designed for the education market. It focuses on maximizing time for applied learning and feedback, incorporating tools such as a multi-user white board, breakout rooms, shared notes, polling, and emojis.
Nearly all educational institutions use learning management systems that teachers and students access to manage all the components of classes or programs such as assignments, grades, and lesson plans. Integration with learning management systems is important for the success of an online learning platform, and BigBlueButton is built into the core of some of the most popular options like Moodle, Canvas, Schoology, and D2L.
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The pain points of teaching computer science
Teaching is hard.
But exactly what about it is hard? How could technology help?
To investigate the pain points that CS instructors face and their workarounds, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 32 computer science instructors. Their institutions range from large research universities to small liberal arts colleges and community colleges across 7 different countries.
We asked open-ended questions about lecture structure, availability of resources such as TAs and software, time spent on various activities, techniques used to improve learning experiences, the most painful aspects of running courses, and potential solutions to their pain points.