A news story published in June, 18, about Free Software learning for teachers stressed the work of the Education WorkGroup at Fisl14. The story calls attention for the lack of available options for teachers willing to use Free Software as an education tool.

The news discusses things such as the availability of tech tools at schools, and the way that both teachers and students make use of it. It also approaches the differences between the underlying philosophies of Free and Proprietary Software, with a statement from Rainer Krüger, from the Education GT and creator of Pandorga Linux, an educational distro. According to Krüger, "(We at the Education WG) try to teach and encourage freedom of thought and dissemination of knowledge for all school levels. This WG shows in practice how you can build any type of knowledge openly and democratically".

While the proprietary software has the same vision of the "old" school, in which the student received everything ready and acted passively, Free Software deploys both student and teacher inside the creation process, fostering construction and sharing values.

Many Free Software groups/projects are mentioned in the story, among them the SL Educacional, a free documentation project of Educational Free Softwares, the Texto Livre (Free Text) Group and the Portal do Software Público Brasileiro (Brazilian Free Software Portal), a repository of Free Softwares maintained by the Brazilian Government.

See the whole story here (pt only, sorry).

Pandorga Linux and it's motto "Educating is fun"