emadrid Seminar on Learning with Free Software Experiences at All Levels

Transcription

1 emadrid Seminar on Learning with Free Software Experiences at All Levels Rey Juan Carlos University, URJC Friday, January 18 th 2013 Organizes: emadrid Network On Friday, January 18th 2013, a seminar organized by the emadrid network on "Learning Analytics will be held at the University Complutense of Madrid. emadrid is a R&D program involving research groups of several Universities of Madrid. It is funded by the Region of Madrid and promotes research and development of Technology- Enhanced Learning. Coordinated by the University Carlos III of Madrid, emadrid includes Autónoma University, Complutense University, Politécnica University, King Juan Carlos University of Madrid and the Distance Learning University UNED as full members and involves other universities, companies and related entities. The schedule of talks is as follows: 15:00 15:30 Israel Herraiz (UPM): MATLAB? I use Octave UPM 15:30 16:00 Alberto Molina Coballes (IES Gonzalo Nazareno, Dos Hermanas, Sevilla): "Private IaaS Deployment for Educational Purposes with Libre Software 16:00 16:30 Juan Julián Merelo (UGR): How to Set Up a Free Software Office and Not to Die Trying 16:30 17:00 Manuel Velardo (CENATIC): Training on (and with) Free Software at CENATIC

2 Where? Rey Juan Carlos University Fuenlabrada Campus Departamental I Building Grade Room Camino del Molino s/n Fuenlabrada How to get there? By subway: "Hospital de Fuenlabrada", line 12 of "Metrosur". By bus: Lines L-1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. By train: "Fuenlabrada central" C 5 line (from Atocha towards Humanes). By car:

3 Summary of talks 1. MATLAB? I use Octave UPM MATLAB is a standard for scientific computing and visualization, and it is a common teaching tool in Engineering degrees. The main drawback to teach using MATLAB is its license: often students cannot afford to install a license in their personal computers, as licenses are very expensive. Octave is a free (both as in free speech and as in free beer) alternative to MATLAB, released under the GNU General Public License. However, to the date, it lacks an easy-to-use GUI (Graphical User Interface), similar to MATLAB. Also, it might difficult to install in some platforms, such as Windows. All these disadvantages are now history thanks to Octave UPM, a GUI for Octave highly compatible with MATLAB. The Octave UPM environment offers the same functionality as MATLAB, and it has been tested with success in several courses (and without changes to existing code), previously based on MATLAB, with more 2. "Private IaaS Deployment for Educational Purposes with Libre Software Cloud Computing is a wide concept that is used in different contexts, which can lead to confusion. In this work we refer to the use of a cloud that mainly provides computing and storage capacities as a service, a model known as Infraestructure as a Service (IaaS). Initially, IaaS was only provided by companies specialized in offering services to customers through Public Clouds, such as Amazon Web Services. Private Clouds appeared later, and these clouds were created using the company's own resources and were built in their own Data Centers. In the last years the software used to build IaaS clouds environments has evolved really quickly, regarding both offered features and configuration simplification, and therefore private cloud deployments are completly feasible even for small companies with little resources. Besides interesting technologies, IaaS infrastructures offer huge possibilities as educational tools for ICT and related studies, as they allow the use of complex and varied scenarios easily and quickly. In this seminar we will describe our experiences after deploying a private IaaS cloud for educational purposes using OpenStack free software. 3. How to Set Up a Free Software Office and Not to Die Trying A free software office is nothing more than a user and aficionados community that, for some weird twist of fate, ends up within a University. As such, it's got the same problems as any

4 other user group, but with the added trouble of its geographical, laboral and societal framework, which are, in all cases, terribly wide. In this talk we will try what is what we have done at the University of Granada to organize and in some cases spawn this community, what initiatives have had any success, which hurdles have been tackled and how we have overcome them across the four years of existence. 4. Training on (and with) Free Software at CENATIC CENATIC is the National Reference Center for ICT applications based on open sources, a strategic project of the Government of Spain to promote the awareness and the use of free software and/or open sources in all areas of society, with special attention in the public administration, companies, the technology sector provider and/or the user of free technologies. Keynote Presenters Biographies Israel Herraiz (UPM): Israel Herraiz is a professor at the Escuela de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos of the Technical University of Madrid (UPM). He holds a MSc on Industrial Engineering from Universidad de Cádiz (ranked first in his promotion), and a PhD with European Mention on Computer Science from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. He has been a visiting scholar to the University of California at Davis, Queen's University and University of Victoria (Canada), and The Open University and Oxford University (UK). He is the author or co-author of more than 30 papers published after a peer-review process, about Empirical Software Engineering. Alberto Molina Coballes (IES Gonzalo Nazareno, Dos Hermanas, Sevilla): Alberto Molina Coballes is an ICT teacher at IES Gonzalo Nazareno (Dos Hermanas, Sevilla). He graduated in physics at University of Sevilla in 1998 where he got his PhD in physics in Since then he has been teaching Network Systems Administration courses, focusing in free/open source software technologies. Since 1999 he has simultaneously been working as a system administrator in the departments and educational centers where he was teaching. During 2011 and 2012 he managed and directed an innovative project about a Cloud Computing infrastructure deployment for educational purposes in four vocational schools. Juan Julián Merelo (UGR):

5 JJ Merelo is professor attached to the Computer Architecture department of the University of Granada. He leads the Free Software Office at the University of Granada since its inception in Before, during and possibly after that, he's been a Perl and emacs user and authored CPAN modules (some of them as useful as Don::Mendo). He's also the author of the only novel that is distributed as part of a Perl Library. Manuel Velardo (CENATIC): Not available yet.