Open source provides fertile ground for innovation, not only in the cloud but in the classroom. Whether you are homeschooled, in a traditional K-12, university, someone looking to learn new skills, open source provides rich opportunities for personal and professional development. This year, Opensource.com writers provided readers with a considerable list of opportunities for continuing education regardless of where you are on the continuum.
Lack of computer science classes
Did you know that only 51% of the high schools in the United States offer courses in computer science? Only 4.7% of students are enrolled in the courses available. This statistic is telling at a time when the US News and World Report recently ranked software development as one of the best jobs in America in 2022. Candace Sheremeta provided us with a list of three open source efforts to reverse that trend in her article about open source tools to introduce students to computer science.
As computer science grows, it's important to have an understanding of what it means to be "cloud native." It's also necessary to understand the nuance of cloud native architecture. Anita Ihuman provides a beginner's guide to cloud native open source communities. This comprehensive article provides you with everything you need to know about cloud native and cloud native architecture.
Ada Lovelace day crowdsourcing
Managing editor Lauren Pritchett, invited us to celebrate Ada Lovelace day with a crowdsourced list of hands-on programming tutorials to fictional adventure novels. Opensource.com contributors shared their favorite books for programmers who are just starting out. You can start from Scratch and add to that a complete list of programming books available from NoStarch Press. This includes my favorite book, Teach Your Kids to Code by Bryson Payne.” There's also a list of three books for very young children to read about coding pioneer Ada Lovelace.
Security and interoperability
Concerns for security and interoperability have provided universities the impetus to move toward Rocket.chat for collaboration. Sara Cemazar has six compelling reasons why academia has adopted Rocket.chat. At the top of the list is how it improves hybrid and remote learning which have become mainstays of higher education. In addition it ensures complete data privacy and compliance with both FERPA in the United States, and GDPR in the EU.
Publishing in academia
Publishing is the life blood of academics and yet it's largely siloed and inordinately expensive to do. That's changing and Joshua Pearce has written about how the paradigm is changing and why open source is leading the way. Joshua writes, “Academics routinely give away their work to companies for free — and then they buy it back." Academics like Joshua have been trapped for decades in a scheme where they give away their work freely in exchange for job security. Then they pay millions of dollars a year to read our own writing. Now academics can read free, publish free, and stay on track for professional success.
Google Summer of Code (GSoC) can benefit anyone at various stages of their career, including people changing careers, those who are self-taught, those returning to the workforce, and more. You might be one of those people! Stefan Miklosovic provides the details of how you can get involved in GSOC by contributing to Apache Cassandra. Start the new year by getting involved.
Open source hardware
The open source hardware field is growing exponentially with the growth of the internet of things that includes wearables, single board computers, cameras, and robotics. This year Joshua Pearce introduced readers to an amazing opportunity created by the confluence of open hardware in academia and the Sloan Foundation. Supported by fellowships worth up to $100,000 individuals will be able to tackle some of the latest issues for integrating open hardware deep into academia. If you are in the U.S. and interested in one of the eight Fellowships, check out the Request for Proposals here!
Education and open source
It is stunning how many opportunities open source projects give people to learn and improve themselves. Education can be costly but it does not have to be if one takes advantage of the myriad open source resources available on the web. You don't have to look too hard to find something free to learn! Try finding an open source learning resource now. You will not regret it.
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