The Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) in Germany has opened a new laboratory dedicated to open source software. High school student teachers will attend the lab to become familiar with open source tools, the open source development process and legal fundamentals. The goal is to help prepare future schoolteachers.
The Open Source Teaching Software Laboratory (oSL2) is part of KIT’s Faculty of Computer Science.
The new lab was launched with a EUR 125,000 grant from the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts, KIT announced on 15 January.
Teachers attending oSL2 will be encouraged to participate in developing open source. At the same time, the teachers can use the lab to create educational resources and prepare practical tasks for their school students.
Open source is becoming increasingly important, KIT explains in its press release, as open source projects can involve a mix of volunteers, companies, public services and organisations. “Having access to source code also increases confidence in software, enabling for example to check compliance with data protection regulations,” said professor Jörn Müller-Quade.
The KIT Faculty of Computer Science started a teacher training programme in 2016.