Front page of CD 3 version 0.01

CD3: Free Libre and Open Source Software - tools and resources for e-learning, digital libraries, etc.

Welcome!

This is a "sampler" CD of free/libre and open source software of use in educational settings. Please explore what is here for a sample of what is out there.

Future versions will include a lot more including guidelines for teachers, learning content, samples of technology enhanced learning material, educational games, virtual labs and libraries for learners, career guides, training manuals, etc. and the CD set will be customisable, and available in a variety of languages. 

The purpose of this CD set is to provide a selection of free and open source software and other resources for education and knowledge sharing. All the software included here is downloadable from the web at the URLs? indicated. The CDs are convenient for people without ready access to the internet, or with low bandwidth.

Copies may be requested from the CSIR, Meraka Institute,  Open Source Centre, PO Box 395, Pretoria 0001, South Africa.
In future, we intend to provide a web facility to order selected components for a custom CD set.

The software included is most useful for: 

• educators
• learners of all ages
  
• school/university libraries
• community members wanting to share knowledge for the common good
• software developers interested in meeting civil society needs (with an initial focus on education).

The long term aim is to enable communities to empower themselves with knowledge, and to enhance developing world contribution to the global knowledge society.

This is the most technical of the content CDs and some of the software will require technical expertise, and additional software in some cases, to install. Refer to the originating web sites where needed. Some of the listed software has been excluded on account of space limitations

N.B. It is important to observe the licensing associated with each software package on the CD. Details are available within the installation files and the associated web sites.

Installation Instructions

SystemRequirements
Most of the software requires some technical expertise to get started. Instructions are generally available in a README or INSTALL file or in the doc/ directory after extracting the files. The table below summarises what is available on this CD, and provides links to the originating web sites. The installation files themselves are on the CD in directories/folders with easy-to-guess names (e.g. FireFox? is in a folder called FireFox?, etc.). The Ubuntu  GNU/Linux distribution and TheOpenCD? are on CDs of their own (not in this set).

GNU/Linux Distributions

Every computer needs an operating system. Ubuntu 5.04 is available separately or may be obtained from http://www.ubuntulinux.org/. CD 4 includes Knoppix 3.9 - a live CD which allows one to run GNU/Linux from the CD without installing anything on your hard drive.

For a list of distributions out there see http://www.distrowatch.com, and consider the most popular ones first such as Ubuntu, Mandrake, Fedora, SUSE or Debian (on account of its strong "free software" philosophy :-).  Ubuntu is based on Debian, and is available as a single CD. Two projects with releases in the pipeline are Edubuntu http://edubuntu.org/ and Skubuntu http://skubuntu.org.za/, both are Ubuntu derivatives/add-ons aimed at educators and learners (keep an eye on them).

Content Creation/Packaging Tools

Package	Originating web site and useful links	Comments
Reload 2.1.0	http://www.reload.ac.uk	SCORM packaging tool and player.
eXe 0.5	http://eduforge.org/projects/exe/	Assists non-technical educators to create standards compliant content.
vnc2swf 0.4.2	http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/	A screen recording tool for X-Windows (X11), Windows and Mac OS Desktop which captures live motion of a screen through the VNC protocol and converts it to a Macromedia Flash(TM) movie (.swf). Requires a VNC viewer, we include TightVNC?.
GPL Flash	http://www.swift-tools.net/Flash/	GPL Flash ™ library for playing Flash™ movies.

e-Learning Systems

Africa, by not being locked in to any particular way of doing things, has an opportunity to apply and adapt modern e-learning approaches supported by open source software.

Package	Originating web site and useful links	Comments
Kewl	http://kewl.uwc.ac.za/	Knowledge Environment for Web Learning. A flagship African open source project for e-learning.
Moodle	http://www.moodle.org/	Is a course management system – an open source software package designed to help educators create quality on-line courses. Moodle runs on Unix, Linux, Windows Mac and Netware. Moodle is available in 40 languages including Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Danish Dutch, English (UK and US versions), etc.
Open Learning System (OLS)	http://www.ols.ac.za	A learning management system designed specially to support an online constructivist learning environment which works as effectively for both on and off campus students.
Fle3	http://fle3.uiah.fi/	A web-based collaborative learning environment. Localisation has started in a number of African languages. Runs on Zope (included).
ATutor?	http://atutor.ca/	A leading open source Learning Content Management System. See also http://atutor.ca/acollab

School Management Systems

Package	Originating web site and useful links	Comments
School Tool	http://www.schooltool.org/	A School Management Tool. Not included here, but watch this space :-).
Packages like ATutor? and Moodle can help with some of the functions required here, but we have decided not to include a School Management System in this edition. Follow this link for a list of candidates.

Content Management, Portal frameworks, Virtual/Digital Libraries and Archiving

Package	Originating web site and useful links	Comments
Greenstone	http://www.greenstone.org/	Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM.
Koha	http://www.koha.org/	Integrated library system. Docs: http://www.kohadocs.org/
DSpace?	http://www.dspace.org/	Digital library system that captures stores, indexes preserves and redistributes the intellectual output of a university's research facility in digital formats.
Mambo Open Source CMS	http://www.mamboserver.com/	A content management system.
Plone	http://www.plone.org	Another content management system.
Lenya	http://lenya.apache.org/	Content management system written in Java and based on open standards as XML and XSLT, such as Revision Control, Scheduling, a Built-in Search Engine, separate Staging Areas, and Workflow. [Excluded on account of space limitations, but visit the web site]
UPortal?	http://www.uportal.org/	A sharable portal under development by institutions of higher-education. [Not included, check out the web site]
MediaWiki?	http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/	The content management technology behind Wikipedia and other related projects.

 Technical Content for Systems Administrators and Software Developers

Package	Originating web site and useful links	Comments
Apache http server	http://httpd.apache.org/	www leading web server - another open source success story.
Ant	http://ant.apache.org/	A Java based build tool.
Tomcat	http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat	Web Server and Servlet Container - official Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies. Needed for some of the Java open source software listed here.
Java Runtime Environment	http://java.sun.com	Java is one of the most popular programming languages used in open source projects. You my need this for some of the applications (e.g. DSpace?, Reload, etc.). Pay close attention to the licensing.
Zope	http://www.zope.org	Python web application server. Features a content management framework among other things.
Python	http://www.python.org  http://www.python.org/2.3.2/  http://www.python.org/2.3.2/rpms.html	Python - an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language, often compared to Tcl, Perl, Scheme or Java. Growing in popularity.
PHP	http://www.php.net/	A widely-used general-purpose scripting language suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. Needed for some of the applications on this CD.
TightVNC?	http://tightvnc.com	See the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, as if sitting in the front of the remote computer.

General-purpose Office Software, Groupware and Collaboration tools

Most of the software in this category has been excluded if it occurs on the OpenCD http://theopencd.org/ which is likely to have been distributed at the same time you received this CD set. The OpenCD includes office/productivity software, graphics/design software, internet/networking software, multi-media tools, utilities and games. A great introduction to free/libre and open source software. An alternative version of this CD is available at: http://www.go-opensource.org/

Package	Originating web site and useful links	Comments
Gush 1.2.1	http://www.2entwine.com/  and http://www.jabber.org/	Instant messenger and news reader. It is Jabber compliant and supports a number of other instant messaging protocols. [Lic]?
FireFox? 1.0.4	http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/	A fast, secure, standards compliant web browser.

Other links of Interest

• http://eduforge.org/ - this site maintains links to various free/libre and open source projects relating to e-learning.
• http://www.developer-roadshow.net/sa/sa-projects/edu-x-box/

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