“SEUL is a volunteer project to help Linux become an
operating system that the average user can install and operate
easily.” One major focus of SEUL is supporting Linux in Education,
also known as the SEUL/edu (or SEUL-edu) project. LWN met meet
in October with several of the principals of SEUL/edu to talk about
the progress they’ve made over the past year, what they hope to
accomplish in the near and far future and their concerns about what
will be needed to make all of this happen. Joining us that day were
Douglas Loss, currently the leader of the SEUL project, Roman
Kirsanow, the founder of a Linux For Kids site who chose to merge
with SEUL/edu once he discovered the project and its goal, Pete St.
Onge, who assists the SEUL/edu project with administration and web
support and Roger Dingledine, the leader of the overall SEUL
project….”
“SEUL/edu maintains a list of educational software for Linux,
which is well worth a look. It contains over forty entries
currently, ranging from some scientific programs that have
potential use in classrooms to basic learning tools for kids, such
as Linux Letters and Numbers or Dr Geo, an interactive geometry
package.”
“Continuing the effort to create the building blocks for future
development, EduML is a SEUL project to develop a standard
Education Markup Language using XML. The idea is to create a
standard, flexible data format for the exchange of information used
by educators, such as assessment items, curriculular activities,
recording/reporting learner progress, keeping track of resources
(libraries), and contact information. It is being developed by
Bruno Vernier, a teacher in British Columbia. “Once it’s done,
anyone should be able to write an app using EduML as a data format
and exchange data wi th any other EduML-compliant app. That would
mean that the writer of a gradebook program wouldn’t have to worry
about the data format of the quizzing programs generating the raw
grades,” explained Doug Loss. It is currently at version 0.91, so
it should be approaching its initial stable release.”