Open Source In Education Opensource Com

Emily Johnson

-Mar 14, 2026, 10:13 AM

What does "open source in education" mean? What does it look like? A great place to start is our resource page: What is open education? Collected on this page are great explanations, ideas, and other resources. From the introduction: Open education is a philosophy about the way people should produce, share, and build on knowledge.

Proponents of open education believe everyone in the world should have access to high-quality educational experiences and resources, and they work to eliminate barriers to this goal. Such barriers might include high monetary costs, outdated or obsolete materials, and legal mechanisms that prevent collaboration among scholars and educators. Promoting collaboration is central to open education. As the Open Education Consortium says: "Sharing is probably the most basic characteristic of education: education is sharing knowledge, insights and information with others, upon which new knowledge, skills, ideas and understanding can be... Our series on Open Source in Education will share stories from educators, students, advocates, parents, and more who are implementing open source in education and working toward a more open knowledge base for everyone. Create a standalone learning module, lesson, assignment, assessment or activity

Submit OER from the web for review by our librarians We offer tailored and context-specific services for individual institutions, consortia, and organizations looking to have a more intentional impact. As a nonprofit, we're first and foremost committed to our mission of participatory, equitable, and open education for all. These at-cost services help us further our mission in a sustainable way. Open Author helps you build and publish Open Educational Resources for you and for the benefit of educators and learners everywhere. Groups provides a flexible environment to organize, create, share, and discuss resources with others in your network.

Collaborate with group members, tag and add resources to shared folders, create your own collections, all within a public or private group. Every March, Open Education Week invites us to reflect on something that will feel familiar to everyone in this community: the idea that knowledge is most powerful when it is freely accessible, adaptable, and... It is a principle that open education and Open Source have always held in common, and this month’s newsletter is a good occasion to explore that connection more deliberately. The open education movement did not emerge in isolation. The legal and technical infrastructure that made Open Educational Resources possible — Creative Commons licensing, open platforms, shared governance models — drew directly from the Open Source tradition. Tools built on Open Source software made open education operational, not merely aspirational.

That history matters today, as generative AI introduces new pressures and new possibilities for both communities. OSI’s recent work reflects this intersection in concrete ways. Our decision to join the Apereo Foundation in signing the Open Letter to the Higher Education Community was a natural extension of our mission: if Open Source is foundational to education, research, and the... You’ll find more on that, and on Google Summer of Code 2026 — a program that embodies the mentorship and knowledge-sharing values at the heart of both initiatives — in the pages that follow. There is more to explore this month as well, and I think you’ll find the connections worth reflecting on. As always, thank you for being part of a community that understands openness not as a feature, but as a foundation.

The OSI has signed the Open Letter to the Higher Education Community, joining a growing coalition of educators, technologists, nonprofit leaders, and institutions calling for renewed leadership and intentional investment in open solutions across... Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in education refers to software that can be freely used, modified, and distributed. It encompasses a range of applications and operating systems, notably Linux, and includes well-known programs like Firefox and OpenOffice. The movement towards FOSS in educational settings gained momentum in the United States starting in the 1980s, coinciding with the rise of personal computers in schools. As schools increasingly adopt digital resources, many educators are exploring FOSS as a viable alternative to proprietary software, which often comes with high licensing costs and restrictive use policies. FOSS offers significant advantages, such as lower costs for school districts and the ability to run on less powerful hardware, making it particularly appealing in cash-strapped educational environments.

Additionally, FOSS encourages a culture of collaboration and innovation, allowing students to understand and modify the software they use. Initiatives like One Laptop Per Child highlight the potential of FOSS to provide educational resources in developing countries. The discussion around FOSS in education involves diverse perspectives, balancing the need for familiar proprietary tools with the benefits of exposing students to open-source alternatives, ultimately aiming to prepare them for a technology-driven workforce. Free and open source software use is on the rise in public schools in the United States. Beginning in the 1980s and the advent of the personal computer, schools across America have been large-scale consumers of educational software. Much of the software used in schools continues to be proprietary software that schools must pay to license from vendors.

The Free Software Foundation began to advocate for free software in all areas of life—school, home and work. In the 1990s, the arrival of the World Wide Web changed the educational software dynamic, with more schools opting to use free Web-based applications. At the beginning of the 21st century, in addition to Web-based educational tools and proprietary software, educators can choose from free and open source software and free operating systems. Some large-scale projects to educate the developing world, such as the One Laptop Per Child initiative, rely entirely on free software because it can be easily and legally modified to suit local and individual... This article discusses the role of free software running on personal computers and looks at the ways in which it presents a challenge to the prevailing ways in which students interact with technology and... During the final decades of the twentieth century, Americans witnessed a technological revolution.

A century that began with automobiles and airplanes ended with personal computers and the World Wide Web. Experts continue to debate whether the personal computer or the Internet was the most important invention of the end of the century, but there can be little doubt that both technologies have worked together... What is Free Software? As defined by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the leading advocate for free software around the world, free software must meet certain criteria. Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom for the users of the software:

The Free and Open Source Movement (FOSS) in education is a powerful force reshaping the way we think about technology and knowledge sharing. It’s an exciting concept that aims to make educational tools, resources, and content more accessible, customizable, and cost-effective. Whether it’s free software or open educational resources (OER), the Free and Open Source Movement seeks to level the playing field in education. But what exactly does this mean, and how does it impact both learners and educators? In this blog, we’ll explore the opportunities and challenges presented by FOSS, its key initiatives in education, and the future outlook of this transformative movement. The Free and Open Source Movement is built around the philosophy of openness, freedom, and collaboration.

At its core, it emphasizes that software and resources should be freely available to everyone. This movement has two main components: free software and open educational resources (OER). Let’s break them down. Free software refers to software that gives users the freedom to run, modify, and share the software. This is not just about the price tag—it’s about the rights associated with the software. The Free Software Foundation, founded by Richard Stallman in the 1980s, advocates for software to be free in terms of liberty, not necessarily price.

These freedoms are typically divided into four key principles: In an educational context, free software can be used to build customized learning environments, develop educational tools, or even provide software to students and teachers who cannot afford expensive proprietary alternatives. Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are freely available for anyone to use, modify, and share. These resources can include textbooks, videos, lecture notes, assignments, and even software. The key feature of OER is that they come with an open license, which allows users to engage with the material beyond the traditional ways. The rise of OER has been transformative, especially for countries with limited access to expensive textbooks or educational content.

We are seeing more open source software being applied in the education industry. This is no surprise since its specific advantages make it extremely attractive for educational institutions such as schools and universities. The widespread imperative is that more investments need to be made to facilitate digital education. After the pandemic, this became apparent more than ever. This article brings you the list of the most popular open source software in education. Read on to find out what software can be applied at your school or university - and why OSS is especially applicable for education as a whole.

Open source software is a type of software whose code is publicly available. The source code transparency brings very specific advantages to the table. From flexibility to the power of community behind every open source project, open source software has been applied across industries. Research has shown that education is one of the most laggard industries when it comes to digitization. Less than 4% of overall expenditure is allocated to digital spending. Moreover, education as a whole is not drawing on enough private capital to fund the digital transformation.

<img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1126629" src="https://cdn8.openculture.com/2026/03/12203805/seven-hours-of-women-making-music.jpg" alt width="697" height="592" srcset="https://cdn8.openculture.com/2026/03/12203805/seven-hours-of-women-making-music.jpg 697w, https://cdn8.openculture.com/2026/03/12203805/seven-hours-of-women-making-music-360x306.jpg 360w, https://cdn8.openculture.com/2026/03/12203805/seven-hours-of-women-making-music-240x204.jpg 240w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 697px) 100vw, 697px"> A number of years ago, in a post on the pioneering composer of the original Doctor Who theme, we wrote that “the early era of experimental electronic music belonged to Delia Derbyshire.” Derbyshire—who almost... She went on to form one of the most influential, if largely obscure, electronic acts of the decade, White Noise. And yet, calling the early eras of electronic music hers is an exaggeration. Of course her many collaborators deserve mention, as well as musicians like Bruce Haack, Pierre Henry, Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, and so many others. But what gets almost completely left out of many histories of electronic music, as with so many other histories, is the prominent role so many women besides Derbyshire played in the development of the...

In recognition of this fact, musician, DJ, and “escaped housewife/schoolteacher” Barbara Golden devoted two episodes of her KPFA radio program “Crack o’ Dawn” to women in electronic music, once in 2010 and again in... She shares each broadcast with co-host Jon Leidecker (“Wobbly”), and in each segment, the two banter in casual radio show style, offering history and context for each musician and composer. Highlighted on Ubu’s former Twitter stream, the first show, “Women in Electronic Music 1938–1982 Part 1” (above) gives Derbyshire her due, with three tracks from her, including the Doctor Who theme. It also includes music from twenty one other composers, beginning with Clara Rockmore, a refiner and popularizer of the theremin, that weird instrument designed to simulate a high, tremulous human voice. Also featured is Wendy Carlos’s “Timesteps,” an original piece from her A Clockwork Orange score. The second show, above, fills in several gaps in the original broadcast and “could easily be six hours” says co-host Leidecker, given the sheer amount of electronic music out there composed and recorded by...

This show includes one of our host Golden’s own compositions, “Melody Sumner Carnahan,” as well as music from Laurie Anderson and musique concrete composer Doris Hays. These two broadcasts alone cover an enormous range of stylistic and technological ground, but for even more discographical history of women in electronic music, see the playlist below, compiled by “Nerdgirl” Antye Greie-Ripatti. Commissioned by Club Transmediale Berlin, the mix includes such well-known names as Yoko Ono, Bjork, and M.I.A., as well as foremothers Derbyshire and Carlos, and dozens more.

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