Kerala gears up to celebrate software freedom day on Sep 25

Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 21 Kerala is gearing up to celebrate Software Freedom day on September 25 by conducting FOSS (Free Software) based technical classes simultaneously in each of the 14 districts.

The programme will be a joint venture by Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) of the General Education Department and Democratic Alliance for Knowledge Freedom (DAKF).

KITE-Victers channel was the backbone during the pandemic times when for two years, they managed the offline and online classroom sessions which provided a major succour for the state run schools.

K.Anvar Sadath, CEO, KITE said on September 25 , each of the 14 districts will cater to a different FOSS theme for the class.

"On that day, FOSS based training programmes would be conducted in all 14 district offices of KITE. It will be a unique achievement that each of the 14 district offices of KITE will host different themes for the training programmes," said Sadath.

The various themes include Kasaragod (Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia), Kannur (Scribus- DTP), Wayanad (OpenStreetMap), Kozhikode (ExpEyes- Open hardware), Malappuram( GNUKhata- Accounting), Palakkad ( GeoGebra and Maths), Thrissur (Kdenlive- Video editing), Ernakulam (Scratch- Visual programming), Idukki (Opentoonz -Animation), Kottayam ( IoT and Robotics), Alappuzha (App Inventor- Mobile App development), Pathanamthitta (Blender - 3D animation), Kollam (Python -Programming), Thiruvananthapuram (Krita -Graphics).

"Those who wish to participate in the training programmes in the district offices of KITE can register freely from today onwards in the websiteAkite.kerala.gv.in/SFDay2022. Public can also view all the 14 classes in the portal, which was inaugurated by Education Minister V.Sivankutty at KITE Victers studio, here on Wednesday," added Sadath.

Also, there will be public awareness programmes also on Free Software in all the KITE district offices on the day.

As part of this, Install Fests would also be conducted in all districts, wherein the latest version of KITE GNU Linux 20.04 would be freely installed for the public.

As a prelude for the software freedom Day celebrations, there will be specific Free Software based training programmes which will be telecast in KITE Victers channel from September 22 to 24.