Almost every student has to finish some project to complete any course, but how useful are these projects? Now here is something that you can work on and which could actually be used by millions of people around the globe. Besides, you also get recognition for your work. In a way, through your college projects only, you can become a contributor to one of the biggest projects running around –– the OpenOffice.org project.
When we asked Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay, OpenOffice.org, who is driving the project in India, the primary goal of this project, he averred, “We have started working on giving a shape to The Education Project in India. The primary goal is to enable students and teachers to contribute to the ongoing Openoffice.org project. Most of the students work on C++ and other languages and that’s what Openoffice.org is based on. So, if students have to complete some projects during their course, why not work on Openoffice.org projects and contribute. This way, they will end up in doing something which could be used by users all around the globe.”
The Education Project from OpenOffice.org aims to be the single window for students, teachers, academic and persons interested in education to join, participate and contribute to the OpenOffice.org project.
Another aim is to be a centre stage for tools and initiatives around OpenOffice.org -- the product and the sources that can be shared by our international community and where students of any level can find a place to participate easily.
The Education Project intends to also help create course content aimed at potential contributors that can be adopted and adapted to varying needs. The Project thus provides a development category so as to have a central view for students into the development of OpenOffice.org. It also offers a tools category listing several tools available through OpenOffice.org. There is also a set of stories about inclusion and usage of OpenOffice.org in schools and universities. It also provides inks to enable developers to begin contributing to OpenOffice.org.
So who exactly are they targeting -- what kind of students/schools? Mukhopadhyay elaborates, “We are targeting students who have potential to contribute. It could be a 10th grade student who has enough knowledge of languages like C++. They can write extensions for Openoffice.org. The mainstream engineering students are always interested in contributing, but they don’t have handy resources. And if they go through the normal route of getting to the community, it’s a long process, which works. But here we are trying to simplify things. Through our initiative, students will not only get tools to work on, but also mentors who could guide them in right direction.”
Through this project, Openoffice.org provides a place for OpenOffice.org users in the context of education to discuss about adapting OpenOffice.org to the pedagogy. You can find a whole set of tools around OpenOffice.org adapted to the pedagogical use. In addition, its mission is to incubate contribution to OpenOffice.org by writing code, documentation, creating artwork, triaging bugs, doing QA 'together'.
By participating in the Education Project, you can learn about how the source code for OpenOffice.org is organised so as to develop effectively. This will also give you an idea about which tools are used in OpenOffice.org and how to build OpenOffice.org for the various supported operating systems. You will also get to know that how a new feature is accepted, scheduled and implemented, how the QA is managed and undertaken, how components and modules function, how can one put in a Request for Feature Enhancement, how can an extension be created, and in the last but not the least, how to become a Domain Developer for OpenOffice.org.
What approach has the Openoffice.org team adopted to promote this project in India? Mukhopadhyay adds, “We are talking to school bodies, academicians, VCs of colleges and other institutes. This way, we are generating awareness about the project. And there are a lot of enthusiasts who are doing this on their own, spreading the word.”
So, click here to join today. You can also e-mail to: sankarshan@openoffice.org.
--by Swapnil Bhartiya
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