We’ve been thinking a lot about our kids education recently.  The oldest is nearly 4, and education in New Zealand begins between the ages of 5 and 6.  In the lead up to school, children can attend a Kindergarten or similar and until last year there was a mobile kindy that came twice weekly to our village.  No more.  The nearest kindy is now just over 20km away and there are long waiting lists to get a three year old in, and minimum for acceptance is 3-half days a week.

We decided to enrol him in Pre-school Correspondence School.  It has worked brilliantly.  Every month to 6 weeks we receive a satchel containing 4 library books, a puzzle, a cd of music and lots of literature for me in support of the months theme.  The beauty of this system is that I give feedback on how the latest offerings were received and what else is going on in the child’s life, and the next posting is tailored to this information.

This has then opened the discussion for home schooling, or even continuing with the correspondence schooling.  Our preference is Sudbury schooling (which I’ll discuss a bit later in the post), but there are none in New Zealand or even Australia.  For this to be an option it would entail a huge move OR starting one for ourselves….  anyone out there interested in helping us get one started?  In all seriousness, we’ve asked the Ministry of Education for the guidelines and regulations involved in setting up a school and will soon advertise for expressions of interest, in helping start a school and for potential students.

Current education leaves much to be desired. How so?

• children are put into an authoritarian system (school) and are expected to function in a democratic society once they leave school

• children are segregated into age groups, if not gender as well. Where in the real world is there segregation in age groups? Doesn’t every adult deal with all types of people, all ages, all walks of life?

• education mostly focuses on teaching, not learning. If there is no motivation, the teaching will not yield learning.

• students are discouraged from asking questions where the teacher doesn’t have the answer. Discussion and debate are discouraged, unless the teacher can have the upper hand.
• a child’s individual style and speed of learning is ignored. The learning that would naturally progress is altered and forced.

What is Sudbury schooling?  Basically it is kids deciding what to learn, when to learn and who/what to learn it from.  They use self-initiated activities to learn – like you do as a baby, when learning to crawl and walk or dress yourself.  This is then ‘fun’ learning, rather than forced or coerced.  Students interact with one another and the staff freely, irrespective of age. They learn to interact as part of their community and have responsibility, for themselves, for their education, for their environment, and for each other.  Each member of the student body and staff have one vote, and an equal say in the running of the school.

I was looking up Sudbury Schools, to make sure I had my story straight, and the one that is linked is the original Sudbury Valley School, founded in 1968. This is the successful model on which many other (Sudbury) schools have been based. Most are located in the US, but there are a few in Japan & Israel and the rest in Europe (Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, & Germany). I discovered one called Open Source Learning, (Sudbury in Hawaii) – I’d never thought of it this way, but the name what it describes fits totally into our philosophy.

Interested in reading more?  Click here.

These people can say it so much more eloquently than we do.

Onwards and upwards for open source living!!

Open Source Living is a primary source of free software, for all sorts of uses.

Open Source Living is a new community-driven site focused on Open Source projects:

Through a simple, elegant and efficient presentation of resources and information, OS Living aims to highlight small and large OSS projects, to inform and raise awareness to OS ethics, and to reinforce the credibility of OSS as a viable alternative to corporate funded, closed source software.

The site uses a very clean layout and a smart use of tags and categories to organize the content in a very easy-to-use format.

In addition they deployed the WP-PageNavi plugin by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan to enhance the site’s navigation:

[ Visit Open Source Living ]

Cerchi dei programmi open source per Windows, Linux o Mac OS X?

Beh, l’unica cosa che ti conviene fare è navigare su

Un ottimo sito, con tantissimi programmi open source divisi in 10 categorie…c’è qualcosa di più semplice?

Navigate, e sono sicuro che troverete!!!

Open Source Living

È da poco nato, infatti è ancora in beta, un nuovo sito completamente dedicato al software Open-Source: Open Source Living.com.

All’interno del sito troverete una piccola presentazione e link per il download di programmi open-source i quali sono stati divisi in categorie tipo Audio, Video, Web++.

Il sito è molto bello e un grande aiuto per questo mondo, l’open-source, che poco a poco sta crescendo e evolvendosi. Buona fortuna a questo bel progetto e all’open-source e buona navigazione del sito!

[fonte: Nicopi]

Internet’in en çok tercih edilen açık kaynaklı yazılımlarının bir araya toplandığı güzel bir site Open Source Living.

Sade ve kullanışlı tasarımı ile de benzeri sitelerden bir adım önde.

Açık kaynak programları tercih edenler için güzel bir arşiv.

Adoro l’open source, e diciamocelo…ci piace soprattutto se è gratis, perché, come saprete, ciò non deve per forza essere sinonimo di gratuità. Fortunatamente i migliori software open source in circolazione sono gratis (e noi tutti siamo felici).
Spesso ci capita di dover cercare un buon software (magari open source) che soddisfi le nostre esigenze e googlando, googlando alla fine cerchiamo il nostro amato software (o forse no). Adesso però, prima di sprecare neuroni nelle nostre quotidiane ricerche di software, facciamo prima un salto su questo sito:

OSLiving.com contiene una lista di tante applicazione open source, come dice il sito dal costo zero e di alta qualità, suddivise per categorie. Se proprio il software che cercate non è in lista…beh, non vi resta che googlare

Come trovare applicazioni Open Source con facilità?
Open Source Living.

Open Source Living – the free software archive, es una iniciativa libre que pretende reunir todo el software libre que anda dando vueltas por la nube. Contiene un foro, varias secciones y como dato de color hace sólo 5 días que empezó

Para no perderle el rastro, hace falta un poco de orden ante tanta oferta

vía DIGG