What is POINTS?

POINTS is designed to be a community of educators and Open Source advocates.

POINTS is about finding ways of taking advantage of the Open Source philosophy in the classroom. Here are a few of the reasons to consider the open source philosophy:

• By using Open Source software, students are able to run the very same software at home without the barriers of outrageous license costs.
• Functionality can be sought without having to search for funds.
• More consistent values being taught such as sharing by encouraging the sharing of information.

In a nutshell it's about:

• Bringing an open source philosophy to the classroom.
• Sharing information and building upon that information.

How you can help:

• As you can see, we're in desperate need of a logo. If you think you can come up with something, please do so and send it here. The logo's that have been submitted can be found here.
• POINTS needs to be funded in some way. Rimuhosting are helping out with a discounted rate for a Virtual Private Server. The monthly costs aren't bad - only around $25 / month for hosting. If you're part of an organisation which you think might be able to help, please let me know.
• Join the mailing list. The mailing list is where everything will get discussed. If you have an idea of an application or are looking for a piece of software that will do what you want it to do, then this is the place to ask. If you have suggestions for the site or want to make a difference in our efforts here, here's a great place to do so.
• Contribute to the wiki. If you have a lesson plan (stories around trigonometry, an interesting way of teaching the most mundane of subjects etc), or information on interesting approaches to teaching, then share that information with your fellow educators.