openlab esev: new adventures in software development

www.esev.ipv.pt/openlab

OpenLab ESEV: new adventures in software development

Luis CarvalheiroEscola Superior de Educação

Instituto Politécnico de Viseu (Portugal)

Maria P. FigueiredoEscola Superior de Educação e CI&DETS


25 to 29 of July 2012

Nelson A. F. GonçalvesEscola Superior de Educação e CI&DETS



What is OpenLab ESEV?

• Project of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu’s School of Education (ESE Viseu)that aims to promote, foster and support the use of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (F/LOSS), Free file formats and more flexible copyright licenses for creative and educational purposes.

• Key areas of action:– Dissemination, – Training, – Support, and – Production.

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Intro & context


What is Free Software?

• To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” (RMS)

• Freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. • The freedom to run the program, for any

purpose (freedom 0).

• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).

• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3).

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Background and some context information

• ESEV is a public institution of higher education, situated in Viseu (northern-center of Portugal), and was founded in 1983 as a teacher education institution. Currently, it has over 1500 students and 105 teachers and offers nine undergraduate and 13 Master's programs, most of them related to education (i.e. teacher education, social work, environmental education) but also including cultural animation, arts and multimedia, sports, media and advertising and public relations

1 OpenLab emerged in an environment characterized by...

• the lack of knowledge of the existing Libre alternatives.

• work habits exclusively built around proprietary software.


Since the end of 2009...Dissemination

1


Since the end of 2009...Training

1


Since the end of 2009...Support

1


Since the end of 2009...Production

1


http://nafergo.intervir.net/


StudiozCollabPress

2

• How to setup a web-based tool to support short movies projects management and collaboration under 10 minutes and for free?

• Why?• Efficiency (time, tasks and group

management) and Educational purposes (organization and project management principles, project and workflow/pipeline overview).

• Proprietary solutions (Shotgun or Alienbrain): expensive, complicated installation/setup, time-consuming learning curve and... proprietary.

• Free/Open solutions (Helga, Stalker or OpenPipeline): not yet available to the public, unfinished (not usable), software dependent.


StudiozCollabPress

2

• How?• From scratch or “on the shoulders of giants”?

• WordPress + CollabPress


The Factory http://thefactory.animaxionstudioz.com/

The End Of Capitalism http://teoc.animaxionstudioz.com/

Press to start!

Another useful plugin for dashboard messages


Using other plugin you can rename to...

AdministratorDirectorArtist...


StudiozCollabPress

2

• And now?• September/October 2012: Setup our own

server (Debian) and use SCP to support several students projects.

• 2013: Bug fixing and minor tweaks, task lists (?), file hosting integration (?).

• Download & News• http://forge.animaxionstudioz.com

• http://www.esev.ipv.pt/openlab


Ottographer

3

• A webcam time-lapse tool for operating systems based on GNU/Linux Debian & Ubuntu.

• Why?• Teacher-student needed for a science

education project for Primary School.

• Simple (kids can do it, teachers can do it), fast (couple of minutes & a few clicks), cheap (no software license fees, no need for expensive hardware) way to create time-lapses.

• Empowerment (Creating our own tools) & Free Software coding is fun!

• Dr. John Ott


Ottographer

3

• How?• Ottographer is a bash script that depends on

several applications and libraries available for GNU/Linux: ffmpeg, mplayer, x264, xawtv, v4l2ucp and v4l-utils.

• A simple GUI (Zenity) guides the user through the process of setting up the webcam, capture interval, project folder and resolution.


Ottographer

3

• And now?• Deploy the application through teacher

education programs (Kindergarden and Primary School).

• Use it at our school for different (education and art) projects.

• Documentation: tutorials and lesson plans (science & arts education).

• Download & News• http://forge.animaxionstudioz.com

• http://www.esev.ipv.pt/openlab


• OpenLab ESEV (+ animaXion studioz) animation project

• Refine our Free Animation pipeline

• Explore new possibilities: Videogame for Android? VFX with Camera/object tracking?

• Continue bash scripting (image/movie converter) & start Python group (Blender add-ons).

• Documentation!

• OpenLab ESEV exists within a portuguese public institution of higher education. Formative and ethical dimensions of our intervention are particularly important. Ethics matter!

Final thoughts

What we've learned and where we're going to...


Free Software is a matter of liberty, not price. Using Free Software is a statement about the world we live in and how we choose to live in it.

openlab esev: new adventures in software development

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higher education

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ciamp

primary school

openlab esev

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