9th Annual 21st Century Learning Conference

In this workshop, Mel Varga and Ross Parker will present the story of their experiences with the Gibbon school platform, an open source system designed to make schools better. Starting in September 2015, Mel has worked to lead The International School Macau's effort to move from a proprietary school system to Gibbon, with the result that TIS now boasts a free, flexible, community driven and highly usable suit of software for staff, student and parent use.

By leveraging skills already existing within their school, TIS are now working to give back to the Gibbon community.  Faced with a similar decision matrix at International College Hong Kong in 2010, Ross found reliable, flexible and mature open source solutions for schools to be lacking, and so set out on the journey of creating Gibbon. Building on prior experience of building and deploying school platforms, Ross was able to offer the essentials that most schools seek, as well as some innovative functionality, but quickly encountered setbacks in driving adoption of open source systems in school. This workshop tracks the development of Gibbon from conception, through development, to adoption.

This session is aimed at educators who are keen to get more out of their school's systems and data, regardless of their job title or experience in such areas. Attendees are invited to consider what offers a better fit for education: corporate software driven by profits, or a community of practitioners building free software to meet their own needs and push forward their own practice.