Week 11: Open Source Software

This week we did not have class, however, we had to read up on Open Source Software.  This was the first time that I heard about this free software and I was really excited to look into it.  Open Source is free for anyone to download to their computer and includes programs just like Microsoft Word, Excel, Spreadsheet, and even Photoshop.  It was interesting to see all the programs that can actually be downloaded for free to someone's computer, instead of having to pay the hefty price for these programs.  OpenOffice.org is great to have because with it, a person can get all the essential programs for free.  Source Forge also provides people with numerous programs that can be downloaded to the computer.

When I become a teacher, I will certainly advocate and advertise open source software, because it is a shame that so many people do not know about it.  This will be something that I would let the parents know about.  They can download these programs for their children while their kids are still young, so that parents do not have to spend so much on buying the programs.  Also, I will let the school administrators know about open source and other teachers as well.  I think since school budgets are so tight, it is important to know about this free software.

This is a video from YouTube that discusses a few open source programs.  The lady in the video talks about Open Office as well as Mozilla Firefox and many other programs.  She actually goes on to define what open source actually is and gives examples of how open source is made.  This is a great video for people who want more information about open source programs and it even parallels with what we learned in class.