Our mission is to promote the use of Open Source technology by elementary, middle, and high schools across the Commonwealth and beyond, and to lend support to the individuals and teams who are pioneering this effort.
Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) is a unique approach to software development. The human-readable source code is liberally licensed so it can be freely used, studied and modified by other programmers. The fourth freedom is being able to distribute the modified work while continuing to respect the freedoms of the license which was used. This has resulted in products that are developed and updated in response to the actual needs of users, and that provide specific solutions to problems that have not yet caught the attention of the commercial software sector.
FOSS encourages users to ask lots of questions, to find their own answers, and to work with others to develop new solutions to problems. It is therefore an excellent match for school environments that encourages open inquiry and collaboration.
MOSS SIG is a Special Interest Group within a larger organization called MassCUE (Massachusetts Computer-Using Educators. Our blog is administered by Algot Runeman with special thanks to Michael Selva who started the group and this blog.
MOSS SIG encourages comments at all times from members and all others. For extended interactions, MOSS SIG has a group email list.
http://groups.google.com/group/mosssig2
Come join us there.
Moving to Open Source Software in Schools 
April 23, 2011 at 10:09 am
Keep me informed as always.
Nice site.
Dave
April 23, 2011 at 11:26 am
Nice work
January 18, 2013 at 9:16 pm
Hi Algot,
I first stumbled across your twitter account today, which led me here…
I’m a former math teacher from a low-income and low-performing environment, and honestly believe free and open source educational tools are the only way forward in education at all grade levels. As part of my current job, I get to explore teacher blogs on Fridays to seek out innovative teachers and strategies to spread to more classrooms around the country – with an eye toward educators who are working to transcend “canned” lessons and move toward an attitude that aims to transform learning and create exciting opportunities for students, regardless of the quagmire that surrounds!
Reading your blog and your twitter, I wanted to let you know about Sokikom, which is an online tool teachers use to (1) streamline classroom management, and (2) differentiate math instruction. Sokikom is free product built based on the feedback from teachers and U.S. Department of Education research grants. As I read your blog it seemed like you might be interested…so I thought I’d pass it along. We’ve gotten an incredible amount of feedback from teachers using Sokikom, but are always looking for new suggestions as well, so if you decide to give it a try, please don’t hesitate to reach out me personally with questions or feedback! I think your deep and engaged perspective on the landscape that faces teachers would be incredibly insightful for us to learn from.
I hope your week is going well, and have a great weekend!
Austin Boehm, Director of Teacher Happiness
Sokikom