Open Source

What is open source?
Personally I would sum it up with one word: awesome.
A little more in-depth definition needs to include the following:
1. Free to distribute
2. Producted developed by many (meaning anyone is free to modify it and many great apps are developed by groups, not individuals)
3. Based on code that is free for all to use.

Personal open source favorites:
Audacity (audio editing with some great plug-ins available)
Open Office (even though I own word and use it in my classroom, I love having the option to use Open Office and make sure my students know about it)
Firefox (THE BROWSER. Sooo many great plugins, great built in RSS reader, etc)
VLC (amazing multimedia player with great file converting options!)
Handbreak (great copying software for the Mac)
NVU (for an open source program it's a great web developing program!)

As far as the MIT initiative, I thought it sounded awesome when I first heard talk about it a couple years ago. I also think iTunes has helped education with the educational podcasts they have available.

Finally, I definitely would like to use open courseware with my students. While I have professional programs in my computer lab (MS Office, Adobe CS3 Suite, etc) I let my students know about other program they may use outside of class though I need to take it a step further and make a bunch of CD's loaded with open source software and give them to those that are interested.