[school-discuss] itd/aica agreement and iso project

[Paolo Pumilia <xpol@interfree.it>]

Hi Doug and all, 

ITD (istituto per le tecnologie didattiche) a CNR research istitute to 
study how to profitably make use of computers in schools, is going 
to sign an agreement with aica and a few more bodies, to boost 
a project, started a few months ago, aiming at:
  1 - producing notes and hints about the didactic value of a selected 
      number of open source applications 
  2 - providing technical support to a selected number of primary and 
      secondary schools in italy

Dr. Michela Ott (whom i am copying this announcement) will be in charge 
for part 1, as ITD researcher, while AICA will take care of part 2, by 
coordinating the efforts of more reseach groups, volunteers and small
business. 
For more info about the ITD database, please visit http://sd2.itd.ge.cnr.it/
Presently, we cannot count on a large team, so i foresee a gradual 
progression as far as part 1 is concerned, during this school year, while 
part 2 is expected to start next september. 
I hope a collaboration could be established between our 'opensource/didattica'
study group and people involved with the ISO project, expecially phase 2,
that is testing applications for usability in schools. 

Giovanni Caruso, engineering student, collaborating with ITD, is 
available to maintain the connection. He has already subscribed
schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net
Two dozens programs have already been collected, that have likely already 
passed ISO phase 1; we are going to test them and to produce some notes 
about each of them, that could be traslated in english to be added to the 
ISO final product. 
We are also available to submit more applications to the same process,
according to your suggestions. 

To expand our project over several european countries, we are looking for 
partners and considering the possibilty to apply for funding to 
the FP6: http://www.cordis.lu/ist/workprogramme/fp6_workprogramme.htm

For more info, please let me know. 

thank you 

-- 
Paolo Pumilia

AICA OpenSource WorkGroup Coordinator 
mob: ++39 347 2315 496