Teachers Without Borders To Release Free Software

Media Newswire reports that the Teachers Without Borders organization is set to release new software tools that “will provide the world's 59 million teachers with easy access to online educational materials that previously have been available only in developed countries with access to high-speed Internet connections and elaborate computer networks and platforms.” These tools “will make it easy for teachers to collaborate by creating groups and then working on individual pages, or by creating and sharing galleries, blogs, forums, news feeds and bookmarks.”

OK, I’m a bit confused. I thought these tools already existed in various incarnations (e.g., Moodle, WordPress, Flickr, etc.) Aren’t these available to everyone?

OK, I’ll read on:

TWB Tools will initially contain a small library comprising primarily TWB books, five full professional development courses "and all the tools one would need to build one’s own library and/or contribute to the main branch," he said. Mednick added that it will be "quite easy to import more, so that the local communities can have a baseline of content from which to work — to copy, remix, reuse, adapt, adopt."

Well, I guess I will have to wait to see what these tools actually will look like. “TWB Tools are scheduled to be available in February 2007 on the Teachers Without Borders Web site.”