Open source for learning

My Recommendations 

Open source applications that I've used for learning contexts

Drupal

Drupal is a powerful community management system, with various forks for education. FunnyMonkey offers Drupal services for education and Acquia offers enterprise grade Drupal.

Moodle

a constructivist web environment for more formal learning with a great worldwide community

Elgg

for informal web-enabled learning where the learner is the centre of it all

ATutor

a web-based learning system designed for accessibility and with a number of easy to add modules, such as collaboration..

Gimp

An open source image manipulation program similar to Adobe Illustrator(R). An excellent tool for editing photographs.

Open Office

An excellent office productvity suite without the hassle of additional licenses when you need to add users or extra machines. Open Office has a word processor, spreadsheet, database, and slide show creator that can import/export in most major formats including Microsoft Office(R), WordPerfect(R), Macromedia Flash(R), and Adobe Acrobat(R).

WordPress

The best blogging platform, with many learning applications. test it out on Wordpress.com

Open Source Learning Links 

IncSub

James Farmer's social software and open source for learning

FLOSSE Posse

Free/Libre and Open Source Software in Education

OS Course Management Systems

Comparison of open source course management systems by Edutools.info

Free Online Education Links

Annotated links posted by Christopher Sessums

Moodle Bug

Josie Fraser offers advice, support and services around the recommended Moodle system.

Curverider

David Tosh and his team offer professional services related to the recommended Elgg Learning Landscape system.

IT Conversations - Open Source

Audio files on open source topics

EduForge Learning Resources

Extensive list of resources, including blogs, wikis, journals, associations, portals, etc. covering open source and open content in education.

Open Academic

OpenAcademic provides turnkey hosting packages, transfer service, and custom development for Moodle, Elgg, Drupal, OpenID & MediaWiki.

FOSS for OER

UNESCO's wiki - FOSS solutions for Open Educational Resources

Reference Articles 

If you want to dig deeper

Seeking an Educational Commons

Abstract: Seeking an educational commons: The promise of open source development models by Gary Hepburn

Schools are hindered by cost and flexibility problems as they try to obtain resources such as software and textbooks. Open source development processes are producing products that can address many of these problems and, as importantly, provide a better alignment with core educational values. Indeed, open source products potentially encourage the development of an educational commons.

MIT Open Courseware Initiative

This is MIT's free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. The Creative Commons licence allows for attributed use for non-commercial purposes.

The potential of open source approaches for education

This paper [from FutureLab in the UK] discusses some of the potential ways in which the approaches that characterise FLOSS [free, libre open source software] might be applied in educational contexts; specifically, whether they can act as a model for education in:

* offering new approaches to teaching and learning, specifically enabling personalised learning and enhanced learner voice
* enabling knowledge sharing and collaboration between teachers
* overcoming structural divides between developers of educational software and its users.