Open source on the education agenda

tectonic.co.za is running an interview with Richard Weideman, Ubuntu education programme manager.

Canonical has been pushing further and further into the education space, with Ubuntu variants such as Edubuntu and Kubuntu creating considerable buzz. Now, as a dedicated manager based in South Africa, Weideman wants to take the Ubuntu and open source message firmly into the learning arena.

"The wider community readily acknowledges that Ubuntu has succeeded in making it easy for the average non-technical end-user to install and use open source, and avoid vendor lock-in," he says. "We're targeting these same goals in the education space."

The idea is to free up teachers "to spend more time and energy on the task of teaching, and less time managing the IT environment" as well as freeing up IT capital expenditure and directing it towards training and support for teachers, he adds.

Like many of Ubuntu's activity, this is based out of South Africa.

cheers, stuart