Amachu

A day long conference titled “Open Source Tools in Education: Benefits & Challenges” was Organized by SCMS School of Technology & Management, Cochin on 07 Oct 2009, jointly with Redhat.

The day long session had speakers from different backgrounds sharing experiences from their respective field works. Anwar Sadath, Executive Director of IT@School Project shared his experiences on taking FOSS to the teachers & students of Kerala. Later Sri Ramadoss, of Gemini Communications, FOSS Services Division, shared with the participants the importance of Free Software and its relevance to a healthy society covering the Business aspects and more.

Krishna Das, Director of Open Source Solutions ICS Ltd., later shared few notable a case studies that made customers (both Public & Private sector) realize the importance of FOSS. Ignatius Kunjumon, CUSAT gave an insight on FOSS Productivity Tools & their use in Research. It was and in-depth overview covering all aspects of Arts, Science, Engineering & Technology and usage of FOSS in them.

Kumar Chander of SCMS-Cochin shared his views on Role of Intelligent Agent in Learning Management System. Dr. Vijayakumar, Reader & Hon. Director, Centre for Information Literacy Studies, Univeristy of Kerala, elaborated the audience on Open Source Tools for Library and Information Services covering major FOSS solutions for Library/ Digital Library management like Koha, DSpace etc.,

Dr. Clifton M Kussmaul, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Muklenburg College, Pennsylvania, US shared his thoughts on FOSS in CS & SE Education. Later, Mr. Hiran Venugopalan of Swatantra Malayalam Computing initiative introduced Localization & Swatantra Malayalam Computing to the participants.

The participants were provided with a kit that had a Fedora 11 Live CD with the contents related to the talks mentioned above.

Indu Nair, Director of SCMS Group of Institutions said in her post-event remark,

As an outcome of the Conference we at SCMS are to have “Individual Contribution to Open Source Community” as a component in the Internal Assessment for MCA students in Semester 5. Hope this will bring in motivation and enthusiasm among the students in campus towards FOSS contributions.