Bryant Patten
Director, National Center for Open Source in Education
Bryant Patten has spent the last 20 years developing educational software for a variety of clients. He has managed the engineering departments for several companies, including his own, and has won several awards for software design. He is currently bringing Open Source software solutions to schools to help maximize their technology dollars and close the digital divide between students of diverse economic backgrounds. Mr Patten is also the Executive Director of the National Center for Open Source and Education – a non profit organization advocating Open Source adoption in K-12 schools throughout the United States.
Keynote: The Great Undiscovered Ocean - Open Source in Schools
“I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Sir Isaac Newton
Most schools come to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to save money. While this is a fine reason for using FOSS, it misses a much larger opportunity - the Great Undiscovered Opportunity of teaching children about the benefits of helping create Open Source solutions.
Schools all over the world are recognizing the need to teach '21st Century' skills - multi cultural team collaboration, authentic work, creative problem solving and good digital citizenry. Let's help them by inviting them to join Open Source teams. By getting students and teachers to participate in Open Source software and content projects, the Open Source community can assist schools with the teaching of these skills and access a vast pool of volunteer help for resource creation, translation, testing, templates, art work and, yes, even code. Everyone wins.
This presentation will explore this vision and discuss a number of the initiatives at the U.S. National Center For Open Source and Education (ncose.org) including the one day FOSS conference series, the NCOSE awards and the new FOSS4ward international student curriculum project.
Slides:
Video:
During his presentation Bryant refers to a 'Stuck on an Escalator Video' - it's viewable HERE
Thanks to Nick Cross, Aarnet and MITIE for filming, post-production and hosting.
