Education is Technology

Calligra Office Suite - Free as in Freedom offers Options

My initial feelings about Calligra on Ubuntu (Precise) are that it’s stellar. By the end of the weekend I hope have a better feel for what assistive technologies it provides, whether collaboration features are included, and what kind of community has grown around this project. I would love for example, if AftertheDeadline were turned into a Calligra plugin or extension.

(If you write or teach others about writing, please please take a moment to learn what After the Deadline can offer. It’s already powerful and is very extensible.)

Students are building location-based narratives using a Ushahidi instance on TurnKey Linux’s LAMP stack 11.2. So far, lessons have emphasized

• dialog,
• setting,
• indirect and direct characterization,
• and moving from first to third-person voice.

Above all, we are concerned with producing compelling prose that will not leave the reader asking “So, what?”

Each student will ultimately produce three narratives, and choose one to include as a portfolio piece.

1. Best or worst dialog with an instructor: a dialog that will stay with them forever.
2. Personal narrative tied to neighborhood.
3. Fragment of neighborhood oral history transformed into unified writing.

The instance is public, so students are occulting personal information and fudging enough on GIS coordinates to leave them safe.